Playing with Syringes
by Luke Danger
Summary: After Skulker damages a set of Intangibility Suits, the Guys in White begin Project White Wraith, and as part of it target Danielle as a source of dissectible material. Danielle hurries to Amity Park to find help and in the ensuing chaos Danny must face questions of just how far he is willing to go to protect those close to him. Rated T for mild swearing and to be on the safe side.
1. Chapter 1

_Pre-Story Author's Notes:_

_This is the third part of a longer series, and comes after "Ghost Club". You should not need the others to read this fanfic without being lost or confused, but if you like this I would certainly recommend the others._

_Other than that, all yours. Enjoy the reading. If it isn't what you like, I wish you well in finding what you do like. As usual, as a fan author I own nothing, I'm just borrowing the toys._

**Elmerton Alleys**

Valerie was almost home when she saw the two men step out from the shadows in powered suits, blocking her path. She reached down and grabbed her new Axion Labs made ecto-pistol and turned it on, pointing it at them. "Easy you two. I don't want trouble, but I know how to use this thing."

The two looked at each other and their hands shot for their own weapons with military reflexes before they slowed down as they reached the holsters and looked at each other before slowly letting go, putting their hands to the side in a clear showing of no hostile intent and they stepped out into the open. Valerie lowered her pistol as the light finally allowed her to see who she had pointed a gun at in her growing paranoia. "Operatives Oscar and Kilo?"

"Affirmative, Miss Gray," Oscar said with a military deadpan.

"Do you have an answer to our question?" Kilo asked as the two folded their arms and Valerie finally recognized that they were wearing the prototype Intangibility Suits that they had been testing since that fake exchange student 'Gregor' had shown up in Casper High.

"Yes, I do." Valerie answered. She had given it thought, but even with other students giving her constant trouble for being a menace due to her identity as the red clad ghost huntress being revealed _saving_ their sorry hides, she had a choice to make. "And the answer is no. I'm sorry, but I can't honestly join guys who are happy to fire missiles into a crowded observatory on a hint that they had a secret identity on a ghost. Or who are happy to liberally strafe a restaurant with ecto-weapons."

The two glanced at each other in surprise. "Are you certain?" Kilo asked.

"Yeah, I am." Valerie answered. "Now, have a nice day." She turned to walk away when she heard the distinct woosh of rockets and whirled around just in time to see two rockets blast the Guys in White operatives and knock them further back into the alley. Activating her own Technus-origin armor, she was quickly covered in black and red power armor and had more weapons available to her as she saw Skulker diving out of the sky.

"I was aiming for you, but I cannot ignore a chance for payback!" Skulker shouted as he landed on top of the two GIW operatives.

"Evasion plan Vanilla-88!" Kilo shouted as the two suddenly turned intangible and faded through the ground before pulling themselves out a few feet away, much to Skulker's visible amusement as he dodged Valerie's fire.

"Ah, ghost hunters using ghost technology." Skulker said with a grin as wide as his armor allowed, "Impressive! You finally learned who's superior!"

The GIW operatives activated wrist blasters as Valerie activated her jet sled and took to the air, pulling out her new ecto-rifle and laid down suppressive fire towards Skulker to force him to think about her and not the two government employees who had also fired. The crossfire had damaged Skulker's armor, but he had shot into the air and out of the way. The GIW operatives followed as Skulker engaged Valerie in an aerial duel, a crossfire of blue and the occasional pink energy round lighting up the afternoon sky.

The GIW were working well in tandem, but Skulker seemed to be focusing on them now and had managed to clip the wing of Kilo's intangibility suit, sending him plummeting down. Oscar caught him and dropped him onto a nearby building where Kilo started setting up to support from below, but Skulker came crashing down on them and slashed the suits with his wrist blades, laughing as he did so. "But you are no match for the Ghost Zone's greatest hunter!"

He grunted as Valerie shot him in the back with a high powered burst her ecto-rifle, knocking him forward off of the two operatives who were rattling on about protocol and suit breaches in various code phrased sectors corresponding to some part of the human body as they pushed themselves back up. Leaping off the jet sled as it approached the roof, Valerie fired an underslung ecto-grenade at Skulker and caught him in the armor, knocking him off the building. He flew back up in moments, arms folded as his armor was visibly self-repairing from the damage it had taken.

"Impressive. I conclude this hunt with my damage done and vengeance taken on you white clothed buffoons. Have a nice day." With that, Skulker flew off, turning intangible and effortlessly dealing with the barrage of blue ecto rounds that shot up after him. Valerie leapt onto her jet sled to go after him, but her armor's scanners told him that he was long gone and moving too fast for her to catch before he reached some portal.

"Dang, that spook's fast," Valerie muttered as she flew back down, noticing the Guys in White had called for recovery and were having their suits manually removed. _Must have been damaged pretty badly,_ she noted. _Those Intangibility Suits must be pretty fragile... and expensive, I'm using ghost stuff and it can't do that._

XXX

XXX

XXX

XXX

XXX

**Guys in White Forward Operating Base**

**Amity Park**

"We lost both suits to battle damage, sir, during a White Cross Strike type ambush." Operative Kilo reported as they checked in. "All in all, a major loss."

_"Understood."_ The Director answered as he listened to their report. _"And Miss Gray?"_

"Rejected our offer on account of 'callousness' by our organization." Oscar stated.

_"I see. Well then, it seems that we need to move the White Wraith program forward."_

Kilo blinked. "Sir?" he asked in confusion. "Are you certain? Would Congress even permit us to?"

_"I've sold it to the senators poking into our budget that we're doing this to learn more about ghosts. And with the ghost boy around, knowing how half-ghosts work with White Wraith will only be a boon. Now, will you two follow orders in regards to White Wraith?"_

"Affirmative," the two answered in unison, though Kilo still had his doubts of the program. He was not alone; those who knew of White Wraith were on the edge with it. Intangibility Suits were one thing, but the project was going into an area many of them were uncomfortable with.

_"Excellent. Pack your gear, you two, we have a new target for you for one of the earlier steps of White Wraith. Take your White Condor Jet to Grand Canyon, you will receive a full briefing en route. If anyone bugs you about the amendments to the Anti-Ecto Control Act going into effect, it is an artificial ghost that you hunt. That, or tax audit threats."_

"Yes sir." Oscar answered. "Operatives Kilo Lima Foxtrot and Oscar Mike Romero out." The transmitter shut down and the two looked at each other. "So, White Wraith begins."

"It seems so. I still doubt the program will be worth the cost."

"Perhaps, but it will allow us to equalize in terms with the ghosts. We both saw what happened to technological equivalences."

"The suits simply need more combat modification, which we unfortunately must learn through trial and error. Copying powers with technology is one thing, but I have my doubts over this goal." Kilo explained as they were packing up their wide array of ecto-weapons and gadgetry.

"Would you disobey an order in regards to it?" Oscar asked pointedly. Kilo looked down, knowledgeable to just what kind of orders may come from the program to make it succeed. He would rationalize the morals of the project later, but for now…

"No. I would not. I have my reservations, but orders are orders and it is a path towards dealing with the constant invasions into our reality. We still have our job to do even if people are more favorable to letting some ghosts run free." He closed his briefcase as he finished putting his equipment inside. "Now, to do our job."

XX

**Three Hours Later**

**Grand Canyon, Arizona**

Danielle 'Dani' Phantom. Not a lot of people knew she existed, and those who did were generally quiet about her existence. And she liked it that way, especially as she saw what Danny Phantom went through in the news. She had enough with being hunted when on the run from Vlad Masters/Plasmius, and it was nice to travel the world without having to keep moving, she could actually take in the sights now. Like the majestic cliffs of the Grand Canyon that she was watching now from the quiet corner she had found. It was a beautiful sight...

... cut off by several energy strikes striking the nearby ground and blasting a tree as a heavy white jet flew over the canyon. She dove backwards as it came by for another pass. "What the heck?!" she shouted as she stared at the aircraft.

XX

"We've got a lock on the cloned ghost." Kilo said from the copilot position as he aimed.

"And it is disguised as a human. Disgusting." Oscar added as he brought the White Condor Heavy Jet around and Kilo locked onto her ecto signature, firing missiles as she ran from their pursuit. "Why isn't it counterattacking?"

"Unknown. But likely the same reason the DNA source runs from us: we are too good for him." Kilo answered as the missiles missed as she turned intangible and phased into the rock formations. "White Lightning Sidewinders missed, target has phased into the ground."

"Damn it!"

XX

**Ten Minutes Later**

"Okay, what was that about..." Danielle muttered as she returned to the safe house near the Grand Canyon that Vlad had established some time ago. They were relatively bare for Vlad's taste, but even he knew that sometimes you needed functionality over looks. Besides, they were never meant to be permanent bases, just a place to wait long enough to recover and then leave. Vlad had told her of several, and she had been able to find out where the rest of them were after a little data raid into Vlad's mansion while he was at the Amity Park City Hall. Thorough as Vlad was, Vlad's internal defense was rather lackluster as his own equipment proved to be just what she needed to steal the data on the safe house locations, which she kept on a small wrist communicator. Vlad had figured out that she was using the safe houses, so she usually had to clear out a few turrets first, but they never proved to be a problem until her powers were starting to completely destabilize, at which point she had started making her way back to Amity Park to find Danny and figure out what could be done to stop the destabilization.

She had been residing in this one for a few days now as she explored the Grand Canyon, but the sudden attack had made no sense. Why attack her now? She tried to remember Vlad's descriptions of various organizations and ghost hunters. "Those were probably the Guys in White, then, but why attack me? I wasn't doing anything..." She muttered to herself as she opened the safe house's refrigerator and sighed as there was no water left cold.

"Great, and it'll take a while to cool. I really need to ask Danny about those ice powers..." She glanced down at her hands and wondered if she could figure it out. She had never tried copying powers before as it was always too much of a risk from her unstable DNA, but now that it was no longer unstable... "Maybe it's time to experiment." She grabbed another pair of gallon bottles and a dozen of the smaller ones and shoved them into the fridge as she considered.

Well, how would she experiment? From what she knew, powers usually came when they were either desperately needed, or from a lot of practice. She knew _what_ they were, so she did not have that barrier to slow her down, but she had very little knowledge of how some of them worked. All she knew about ice powers was that Danny shot ice beams like he shot plasma blasts and could freeze things on contact, but how it worked she had no idea.

_I'll decide on what to work on later. Maybe pop by Amity Park at some point and ask Danny what he needed to do to learn._ She walked to the safe house's computer and brought up a map, plotting out a route that would take her by Amity Park while still letting her sight see... she could always wait until she talked to Danny to start experimenting with her powers. To get towards Amity Park, of course, she needed to head to the Northeast, but a diversion up north would not hurt. She was not aiming to set records from Grand Canyon to Amity, after all, and she had the freedom to explore.

XX

**One Day Later**

**Salt Lake City, Utah**

"_There it is, GET IT!"_

Danielle whirled around as she saw the two agents in white and a half dozen white hazard armored infantry behind them, looking straight at her. "You gotta be kidding me..." she moaned as she started running as the Guys in White started trying to force their way through the crowd. She figured that they probably had scanners and picked up her ecto signature. She glanced around and saw an alley and dove into it, hiding behind a dumpster. The GIW agents followed and flanked out in the alley.

"Nowhere to run, ghost brat," the African American operative stated as he aimed his ecto-pistol down the alley with the other half dozen soldiers.

"You're coming in for experiments, lots and lots of really painful experiments." the Caucasian operative stated harshly. "Come out now and we won't have to shoot you first."

_Screw that,_ Danielle thought as she switched to her ghost form, turned invisible, and flew off into the air. Several blue energy shots followed, but the Guys in White lost the trail soon after and she made her way to Vlad's Salt Lake City safe house, hidden beneath the lake.

XX

"We lost it around here." Kilo stated angrily as their GPS tracking of her ecto signature failed again in the display showing their last hunt. "Damn, it must have been thought by Phantom how to evade us."

"Why do we need it specifically anyways?" Oscar asked. "We can use any ghost for the material, correct?"

"Correct. But, as Vlad Plasmius' files indicated, non-'natural'," he put as much sarcastic bite into the word natural as he could as ghosts were decidedly _not_ natural, "half-ghost hybrids are unstable without a mid morph DNA sample used for their creation. If it is now as stable as the files indicate, then it should suffice. On top of that, it is the only artificial ghost of that type we know of and a great scientific boon either way." They were in a GIW field post near the city debriefing from losing the trail and trying to figure out where their quarry was. "Now, we wait for it to trip our sensors. It will not get far before we are on its tail." He paused as he considered the target's relationship to Danny Phantom. "And make sure we keep any videos of this shut down, we do not want the ghost boy to figure out that we are on his opposite sex clone's tail, in the event he is protective of it."

XX

**Two Days Later**

**Rocky Mountains National Park, Colorado**

Danielle looked through the binoculars when she was sure she saw a tank rolling up the mountain side and heard a distinct _thump_ of a cannon firing. Immediately after, a blue beam from the tank enveloped her vision and blasted her backwards, knocking her into the information stand. The tourists there screamed and ran for their cars, ignoring the (biologically) twelve year old who had just taken a direct hit from a tank. Stunned at the fact she had just been shot at by a tank, Danielle fought to maintain consciousness as she started to appreciate just how much ecto weapons _hurt._ Despite the pain, she saw a large armored personnel carrier coming into the tourist stop and it begin discharging GIW troopers, some with rifles, some with disc shaped grenades, and a few with what looked like blue lightsabers. Pushing herself up, she looked at the people confronting her and closed her hands into fists.

"What the heck do you want with me?!" she shouted, a white ring passing from her feet to her head as she switched forms and brought up an energy shield to block the grenades and blue bolts that they fired at her. The shield took it, but the effort combined with how stunned she was from taking a direct hit meant that the next barrage would have hit if she did not leap into the air and start flying away. She needed to hurry to the nearest safe house and get inside before the Guys in White brought in any more troops as blue bolts shot at her from the ground and a missile from the tank overshot her. As she started pulling up the safe house location, she dropped down below the tree line to run interference with their scanners, hopefully.

"Come on, come on…" she muttered as the wrist device was calculating the coordinates. Suddenly, she heard the distinct sound of ecto-rifles firing and threw herself forward, light blue bolts speeding overhead as a half squad of GIW Light Infantry attacked her from behind.

"Take it down!" one of them shouted as he opened fire again, aiming low. Danielle whirled around and shot into the air, deciding that enough was enough. She charged her own plasma blasts and fired a volley from her hands and feet, back flipping as she fired the last two from her feet and dodged a retaliatory shot. The effort left her more light headed, and she knew she could not stick around to fight after taking that direct hit.

"Just leave me alone!" Danielle shouted at them when she finally had the coordinates and she sped off, done fighting them and not in the mood for a continued fight.

XX

**FentonWorks**

**Amity Park**

"Man, what're those maniacs doing?" Danny asked as he watched the news report on the latest GIW attack. It made no sense, they claimed there was a ghost, but there was no proof of a ghost from eyewitness reports. He had even leapt down to Salt Lake City via GCN, showing up there with the Fenton Finder and checked the city out for ghost presence after that 'attack'; the only ghost in town was himself.

"I don't know," Sam said as she watched the TV from where she was leaning on the wall. "I think they just want to look good, like they're on the ghost threat. They have decoy ghosts, remember?"

"True." Danny answered as he sat back down at the kitchen table. "It's probably nothing, but we should keep an eye on it. For now though," he picked up the next letter, "sorting through fan mail... man, what makes people write this stuff?"

"I don't know," his father cut in as he dropped a large invention on the table, knocking most of the fan mail away onto the floor, "but I do know that they're gonna wish they contracted with us when the Fenton Ghost Cannon is ready!" Danny left it unsaid how much fan mail he had sent the Master's Blasters during their short reign as 'heroes of Amity Park'.

"Uh, Mister Fenton, it looks like a giant machine gun with four oversized barrels to me..." Sam said slowly as she looked at the barely worked on device which looked like it should have been mounted on a tank, picking up the various letters as she went. Danny noted that it would have looked perfect in _Doomed_, and probably still would when completed.

"Exactly, but one with a Fenton name to it! And it'll be a weapon with enough stout strength to match my ghost hunting posterior!"

Danny sighed, putting a hand on his forehead and wondered how his father had gotten to the point of naming everything a Fenton (insert-name-here); even Vlad never went that far baring a few exceptions, and those were stylistic in nature rather than trying to cram his name in.

XX

**GIW Field Post White Mobile Alpha**

**Rocky Mountains National Park, Colorado**

"Where is it going?" Kilo asked as they looked over the map. "There has to be a destination it has in mind."

"Perhaps it wanders with no idea? After all, what motivation could a cloned ghost have?" Oscar offered. "But, we might be able to herd it if we fan out. Patrol Almond Three stumbled onto her before she stunned them with energy rays."

"Agreed." Kilo said as he started moving his hand around the map, trying to triangulate some sort of destination along the route, "It is proving far more effective at evading us than anticipated. We will need a stronger mobile force. Time to pull out the White Sky Mobile Infantry, their jetpacks and rifles should be a potent combination. We load the White Bengal Tiger Tank onto the White Condor with a team of said WSMI units, and herd it to the nearest strongpoint if we do not pick it off from afar with the tank."

Oscar pulled out a hand radio. "I will keep a list of nearby airbases so we can scramble White Eagle Strike Jets to go after it if it attempts to fly away at high speeds."

XX

**One Hour Later**

**Safe House**

Danielle phased through the ground and into the safe house easily and heard the powering of ecto weapons. She rolled to the side as a turret fired a pink energy blast at her and she retaliated with her own plasma blast, blowing the ceiling mounted turret to pieces. Two more popped out from the ground next to the door and started trying to destroy her, pink beams firing rapidly. She simply turned intangible and rushed between them, letting the beams destroy each other. No other turrets activated and she stumbled towards the ration stash. She was tired, hungry, and phasing through ecto weaponry was tiring. Having been shot by a tank did not help matters at all, but rapid healing from being half-ghost was a welcome advantage.

"Man, what is it with those white clad freaks?" she asked herself as she phased through the door to the store room and looked at what was there to eat. _Fun... military surplus meat,_ she thought with a sigh as she pulled a can of it out along with a gallon bottle of water and placed both of them next to the small stove next to the refrigerator. She rummaged through the drawers, trying to find where to put her hand to start powering the hideout, most of it ran on an independent function based on the Fenton's ecto-converter with the turrets having their own passive power supply that activated when an intruder was detected without, presumably, Vlad's ectoplasmic signature.

"Aha," she said quietly as she found it and put her hand onto it, wincing briefly as it took energy from her and the equipment inside began to power up. Fortunately, it only took a small amount of ghost energy to run it, or a comparatively small amount.

After putting the gallon of water into the refrigerator, she set to work cooking and started considering her options. _On one hand, I need to talk to Danny about this. On the other, there're still places to see..._ She knew she would have to go to Amity Park eventually, but the freedom she had to go around was something she realized that she had come to enjoy. No being tied down to Vlad's schemes, the ability to see all the wonders of the world...

As the meat began to cook, she took several more cases of water and stuffed them into the fridge and rummaged around the emergency stock for ration bars to tide her over until the meat finished. The bars were tasteless and bitter, but she had grown used to the taste, but she figured that Vlad, of all people, would want something better for food. Or at least something to season it with.

She leaned against the fridge as she started considering what was happening, this was the third time the Guys in White had attacked her, and it was always when she was just minding her own business...

"..._Duh_!" Danielle hit her forehead as she finally connected the dots. They were attacking her when she was in her _human form_ and were deliberately aiming for her. "They're hunting me." She glanced at the safe house's door and realized that knowing that piece of information settled it: she had to go to Amity Park. There, she could hopefully get help from Danny, and worse case worse she could go to the Ghost Zone via the Fenton Portal. _Maybe get a lair there or something... I'll probably need one someday anyways, so why not scope out a property nice and early?_

Either way, she had to be more careful, and this meant no sightseeing, just straight travel and only stopping at Vlad's safe houses to rest for the night and eat. Even half-ghosts had to eat at some point even if they could go a day without it. She reached into the drawers, found an emergency travel backpack, and started filling it with ration bars, a med kit, and left space for water; if she had to eat on the move she would, but she had to make it to Amity Park. She glanced at the safe house's database and wondered what Danny was doing now...

XX

**Amity Park**

"_I AM THE BOX GHOST!"_

"Oh come on," Danny said irritably as he dodged the high speed crate as they fought at the dockside. "What, did Pandora let you go or did you give her the slip?"

"My time of forced penance is done, and now I shall continue my... YEAOW!" The Box Ghost went flying backwards as Sam shot him in the face with her Fenton Wrist Ray, leaving a puce mark in his ectoplasmic form. Danny grinned and looked down at her.

"You love that thing, don't you?"

"Like you have no idea." Sam answered with a smile as she fired another set of blasts at the Box Ghost, who yelped in pain after each shot as he started flying away, and right to where his mother had the portable portal cannon finally recharged and repaired, sending him back to the Ghost Zone with a sniper shot with the anti-ghost equivalent of an unguided rocket.

"Yes!" his mother shouted, "Got him!"

"Nice shot, mom!" Danny called back. "Alright, that's Desiree wished into a Thermos and the Box Ghost send back by way of a portable portal gun. Now we just need to find out where Youngblood ended up..."

"So just you kids?" his father asked as he came up, carrying another bazooka, though this one was built to just hurt rather than create a portal.

"Yeah. You guys can't..." He saw Youngblood behind his dad and charged a plasma blast. "Duck!"

Youngblood had just enough time to realize he was getting shot in the face when Danny's ecto blast hit him in the face, and Jack turned around and pulled out a Thermos. "Eat hot Thermos you bratty invisible spook!" He activated it, but Youngblood was quick enough to dodge and the blue beam just shot into the nearby fishing boat uselessly.

"You missed!" Tucker said as he hurled an anti-ghost disc grenade which skidded along the ground and detonated in Youngblood's face, stunning him long enough for Tucker to activate his own Thermos and suck the childish ghost into it. His parents perked up and watched, apparently able to see Youngblood as he was sucked into the Thermos. _Interesting,_ Danny noted, attributing it to the Thermos containing his power in the process.

"Man, how're we going to fight Youngblood when we're older?" Tucker asked as he capped the Thermos.

"I have no idea." Danny answered as everyone regrouped where Tucker was, "But I don't like the idea of having to employ kids to do it."

"Even if they were trained?" his father asked in surprise.

"Okay, maybe, but I still don't like the idea." Danny dropped down back to the ground and switched back to his human form. "Anyways, let's get these two put away before anything else happens…"

"Hey look, it's Danny Phantom!" someone shouted, and suddenly the place was swarming with cameras and loony fans.

"Like that?" Sam asked as she put a hand over her face to shield her eyes from the camera flashes.

"Exactly."

"Run?" Tucker asked.

"Run."

XXX

**The Next Day; About 4:00 PM**

"Almost there…" Danielle told herself as she could make out the urban landscape of Amity Park in the distance and the GCN hub. She was flying at a comfortable speed and had managed to dodge two GIW platoons so far.

Several blasts suddenly flared out from below and she pulled up sharply, dodging the ground based barrage of ecto-rifles and saw a team of GIW infantry on the ground. Gritting her teeth, she started charging her plasma to fire back when they shot into the air with white flames coming from their backs and within seconds they were at a similar altitude to her and pointing weapons at her, led by two familiar operatives in the same gear. _Of course, jet packs..._

"Come on!" Danielle shouted at them as she created a shield to block their barrage. "I'm not _doing anything_, why won't you leave me alone?!"

"A scale 7.1 formation of artificial ectoplasmic power roaming freely? Unacceptable." the African American operative stated as he fired a cyan square at her from a wrist launcher. She swerved to the side and dodged it before firing her own shot back, hitting one of the supporting jet infantry and sending him flying away as he fought to regain control.

"Really?" she asked as her legs disappeared into a ghostly tail and she contorted around a cluster of missiles fired from a set of tanks in between her and Amity Park, "So how about one that scales higher than me? A certain half ghost you could never catch? Or is he too powerful for you to take on?"

"Please, he always ran from us!" the Caucasian operative shouted as he fired a burst from his rifle and caught Danielle in the shoulder, knocking her backwards and destroying the backpack's strap. It fell as the other strap slipped off from the weight and the backpack fell under its own weight to the ground below.

"Hard to see why, unless he wasn't trying to hurt you!" she taunted back as she fought the pain down and turned invisible and dove to the ground, pulling up just before she hit terra firma and sped towards Amity Park at full speed. She glanced down at her wrist communicator and started wishing that she had calibrated it for calls instead of leaving it as a data storage and reading device.

"Guess I just have to fly to help," she muttered under her breath as she saw the line of tanks ahead and prepared to turn intangible.

"_Scanners got something, lock the area down!"_ Danielle heard someone in the GIW force ahead shout and suddenly crashed into a light blue energy shield, lost her invisibility, and screamed as the electric energy shot through her and she dropped to the ground, realizing that the tanks were shielded. GIW soldiers spewed from the line of tanks and pointed various weapons at her, but she almost did not notice them because _holy hell flying at a hundred miles per hour into an anti-ghost shield was painful._

"You're under arrest."

"Yeah?" Danielle bit back as she tried to focus her intangibility, "what're the charges? Existing?"

"Actually, yes." The Caucasian GIW operative dropped behind her and shoved a gun to the start of her ponytail. "You ghosts, you're all the same even if _you_ are just a clone."

"Oh really? I'm pretty sure there's some significant differences between Danny Phantom and Vlad Plasmius."

"Maybe, but only in the public's perception." The African American agent added as he pulled out another of the cyan squares. "They're all intruding on our reality, and we will clear you aberrations from it."

"Right then, because being zapped with ecto-energy is coming from another dimension." Danielle said with as much dry irony as she could muster as she turned intangible and phased into the ground before popping up behind them. "Bye!" She shot into the air as dozens of blasts followed her, lighting up the afternoon like a light blue fireworks display.

XX

**Amity Park**

"What the?" Valerie wondered aloud as she saw the lightshow in the distance and guided her jet sled towards it. Something was up, and the GIW never did live fire exercises anywhere near Amity Park, and it was not where the GCN site was. She glanced down at the communicator on her wrist and wondered if she should call Danny, then decided against it. She would call him when she had an idea of what they were looking at, and until then he was probably studying for Lancer's next test. She was fairly sure she saw some green blasts too, and activated her scanners to find out where the ghost was.

As she reached the outskirts of Amity Park and one of its outlying parks, she saw things more clearly: some ghost was being chased by the Guys in White, and they seemed to be going all out with most of their heavy units out. _That's unusual even for them..._ She recalled as she heard a jet and looked up in time to see one of their strike fighters speeding towards the area from a distant airbase and strafe the area where the green plasma blasts were being fired from. The ghost, however, was not there according to the scanners and had dodged out of the way of the airstrike.

"Whichever ghost it is, it's good." Valerie said to herself as she turned to head off the ghost before it reached Amity Park.

She dropped below the tree line and found herself in an abandoned picnic area and pulled her ecto-rifle from its back mounted clamp, arming it, checking the heat sinks, and taking the safety off. She aimed towards the ghost's heading and waited patiently for it to come over (or through) the hill…

As it came speeding out of the hill, Valerie's finger was on the trigger when she saw who the ghost was, and so did the ghost who did the flying equivalent of skidding to a halt, her ghostly tail returning to legs, and stopped right before she crashed into Valerie.

"_Valerie!?"_

"_Danielle?!"_

"What's going on?" Valerie asked, shocked to see Danny's 'cousin' in Amity Park, never mind being chased by the Guys in White.

"I came here to talk to Danny, the Guys in White have been attacking me from the Grand Canyon all the way to here!"

"Wow, you've been fighting them the whole time?" Valerie was impressed; that would of put the fight into a multiple day struggle and cross country on top of that. _Now how the heck did that not end up on the news more than it a few footnotes?_

"No, on off with them jumping me while in my human half… here they come!"

Valerie nodded and grabbed Danielle, punching it with the jet sled and activating her suit's communicator; "Time to call Danny, then." She hit Danny's number and it started ringing when a GIW blast hit Danielle and knocked her out of Valerie's grip. She leaned forward and the jet sled shot down after, coming to the ground right next to Danielle. She was groaning and putting a hand on her head when more cyan blasts came from behind them.

"_Hey Valerie,"_ she heard Danny said from her communicator. _"How you doing?"_

"Better," Valerie answered as she grabbed Danielle and leapt onto a nearby park table, tipping it over vertically and creating a makeshift slab of cover as GIW ecto rifle hits took out the top half of it. "Danielle's here and the Guys in White are going mad!"

"_What?! Danielle's here?!"_ She heard him go ghost as the reverberation ghosts always had added itself to his voice, though the most significant change was how his tone went from casual and borderline unconcerned to a hardened combatant taking in the battlefield. _"Where are you?"_

"Just outside of town, Elmerton side of the river." Valerie answered as Danielle recovered and hovered a few inches from the ground. Valerie nodded, taking a jump and activating her jet sled before the two took off. "We're coming towards FentonWorks."

"_Got it, I'm on my way."_ Danny hung up.

"So, where we meeting him?" Danielle asked as they dodged a barrage from the Guys in White.

"I think he's just going to follow the light show. Come on, we can dodge into the alleyways and lose them in a chase. Stick with me."

She nodded, and the two shot towards Amity Park.

XX

**End Chapter**

_- This is another of my try at 'Season 4' of DP. If you want to reach them in order, the previous stories in this are: 'A New World Network' - 'Ghost Club'_

_- Ah, Danielle. A base breaker to be certain. Some say she was a Mary Sue, others say she was an underused character. I can certainly see the Sue traits (after all, we all know how bad a poorly written half-ghost OC can be), but overall I think she was in the underused department. You can hold your own opinions on the matter, but we'd have to agree to disagree. Though, I will say she is a difficult character to do right because you have to get into a mindset of someone who does not have the same experiences as most of us do universally as humans._

_- As for the GIW 'units', most of them came from 'Reality Trip'. The hazard suited infantry and their variants are the same ones who helped our regular GIW Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum raid FentonWorks the morning after the gems were lost. White Eagle Strike Jets are based on the fighters the GIW used to strafe Team Phantom at Cape Canaveral. Finally, the White Bengal Tiger Tanks are the tank we saw used at Gothapalooza, now able to either fire a missile or a heavy anti-ecto energy shot. The White Condor Jet is the large aircraft seen used during 'Double Cross My Heart', and the Intangibility Suits were also seen in that episode._


	2. Chapter 2

_"Sam, Tucker, stay out of this one. If the GIW are attacking, it probably means that there's going to be the political equivalent of Tetslaff hitting the fan, and about as much metal flying everywhere if I have to destroy a tank. I'll handle this."_

- Danny, warning Sam and Tucker off of jumping into his imminent fight with the Guys in White

**Chapter 2**

**Amity Park**

"Watch out!" Valerie shouted as she kicked the table over and dove behind it, taking up a firing position and firing low power blasts at the GIW soldiers trying to storm their position. Combined with Danielle firing her own quartet of blasts, the squad trying to rush them was forced into cover or knocked down and unconscious. They heard rumbling and saw a tank rolling into the park.

"Come on," Valerie muttered irritably as she suddenly understood how a couple heavily armored knights were able to keep peasant uprisings down in the Middle Ages, "a tank, in the park? Are they serious?"

"Yes, they are," another voice cut in: male, and with a familiar faint reverberation.

"Danny!" Danielle shouted, "It's so good to see you again."

"Same here, cuz. Now what's with the Jerks in White? They going for what they think is an easy target?" Danny asked as he dropped down to their position and created a shield, blocking the first shot from the GIW tank. "Valerie, get Danielle out of here while I rip this tiger's teeth out!"

"Where?" Valerie asked hotly as she fired a burst at a GIW soldier and forced him back into cover.

XX

Danny wracked his brains for a safe house where they could lose the GIW as he leapt forward towards the tank. It fired again, but Danny simply duplicated into two, him and his duplicate appearing to the sides of the incoming shot as it went into the distance and hit a tree. Taking advantage of his split flight path, the duplicate fired three energy discs while he created a beam of ice and froze the tank's main gun solid. The three discs hit as he and his duplicate met at the end of their flight path and jointed back up, and the tank's main cannon was out of commission. He shot back to where Danielle and Valerie were as the two were in melee with some Guys in White agents who were equipped with what looked like lightsabers. He dropped in behind the one about to skewer Valerie and grabbed him by the helmet and flipping him over, thrusting him into the ground.

"Thanks." Valerie answered as she knocked the other one going for Danielle away with a lower powered shot to his head from her wrist blaster. "Now, about a place to go?"

"Call the police, call anyone. The GIW are going too far here; Danielle's a half ghost, that means they can't lawfully attack her unless she commits an actual crime."

"Does resisting arrest count?" Danielle asked, "Because I've been dodging them since the Grand Canyon."

"Yeah, though it probably won't hold water because they don't have a real charge." He paused a second as an explosive disc skidded over them and detonated in the distance. _Man, I'm glad there's no one in the park right now._ The explosions had scattered people from the park before it got too dangerous. "Better call, Valerie, we need this to get up the chain of law enforcement fast."

"_Attention Daniel Phantom, AKA Daniel Fenton, cease and desist."_

"Oh great, Operatives Kilo and Oscar…" Danny muttered as he saw the two regulars in the air above them with jet packs. He raised his voice, "Hey, white knuckles, cut it out! She's a half ghost, that means she's _off limits!_"

"Maybe, but she's also only a _clone_. Of you!" Operative Oscar shouted.

XX

"_Maybe, but she's also only a _clone._ Of you!"_

Valerie blinked as she looked at Danielle. Danielle was a clone? "What?" Valerie asked in shock, looking at Danny. "How does that even work?!" She pointed at him, "You're a he and she's… well…"

"It's a long story." Danielle answered as she brought up a shield to block another volley of blasts from the Guys in White. "In short, Vlad's a crazed up fruit loop."

Valerie was still staring flabbergasted as Danny answered the two government operatives, dodging energy shots with various methods from intangibility to manipulating his spectral body while firing several bolts back to keep the GIW soldiers suppressed. "She might be a clone, but she's also a person. And she's under my protection. So just stop this madness here, and no one gets hurt."

"That's a negative, ghost boy, but we'll take that as assisting and abetting a ghost! You're under…"

They were cut off by a barrage of blue bolts and Valerie was still shocked that she had just done that: Fired a full clip into the two government operatives while they were in the middle of threatening an arrest.

Danny dropped down and looked at her as the GIW soldiers were backing off in surprise. "Valerie, you don't have to do this. You don't have to take any heat over what's happening. Just get out of here."

She smiled, there was Danny, shouldering the world like everything was his responsibility. "Thanks, but Danielle's a friend too. And honestly, I'd rather go to jail stopping these maniacs instead of letting them bomb the place trying to get Danielle."

"Would they really bomb the town?" Danielle asked fearfully.

"If they're happy to strafe an observatory full of students with missiles…" Danny glanced at the GIW force regrouping at the other end of the park. "Come on, we need to move, and I have an idea. We need to get to the GCN hub; I can take Danielle anywhere from it. Valerie, just get away from us as much as possible and avoid this mess as much as you can."

"I told you, I'm not leaving you two here," Valerie answered when a large blast blew a crater into the nearby grass and they saw an armored personnel carrier firing some sort of cannon. They were out of time. "Besides, we gotta move!"

Danny nodded. "Get Danielle to the GCN hub, I'll be right behind you."

XX

"The GCN?" Danielle asked. "Why?"

"We're going to run." Danny explained, "And we're going to run somewhere remote so the Guys in White don't hurt anyone here and we don't have to hurt them." His legs disappeared as he started flying and the group departed.

"I didn't take you for a coward, Danny." Valerie shot back as they took off and shot towards the site. "Why are you so afraid of hurting them? They're trying to hurt you, and if they do anything more they're going to be invading Amity Park!"

"Not a fan of hurting people either, but she's right." Danielle cut in. "We won't get anything done if we just run."

"I'm not going to hurt people who are just doing their jobs." He explained as they turned towards the GCN. "Besides, we start a big fight here with that many Guys in White around, we're just going to destroy half the city in the ensuing battle."

"So let's take it outside," Danielle suggested, "The three of us can take them all on."

Much as Danny did not want to admit it, she was right. He alone could, in theory, destroy the entire force of Guys in White as combatants. A single shot of his Ghostly Wail and the entire battalion would be either defeated or too battered to continue fighting... or worse._ No, that can't be my first resort._ Danny reminded himself, that he had to restrain himself unless he wanted to start treading a path that could turn him into Dan.

But, as GIW marksmen started firing on them from the roofs of Amity Park's downtown area and Danny blocked the bursts of ecto weapons with his own shielding powers, he realized that it might become necessary to unleash his full power. "You're right, but I don't want to waste any of them and we'd cause a lot of collateral damage."

"Fair enough," Valerie answered as she managed to snipe one of the GIW light infantry firing on them in the leg, "But I don't think we need to kill them to get them to back off... break!"

The three dove in different directions as tank fired from the center of town straight towards them...

XX

**Amity Park City Hall**

"Sorry to pull you in here, we need you to help us access the emergency functions that Vlad left us. Since you're still technically the mayor..."

"I got it, no worries." Tucker responded to the aide as he accessed the emergency panel in the mayoral office. He may have essentially walked away from the job, but sometimes it pulled him back in. _I really wonder if it's an omen or something..._ he wondered as he started activating the various fallback systems Vlad had created, including his camera network. Much of it had been taken down, but the town left some of the cameras out in public to get footage of ghost attacks, hoping to catch some good material for a ghost tourism project to play on Amity's growing reputation for the paranormal. A few moments later, everything was active and footage was displaying what had been going on.

"Oh man," Tucker said as he saw the GIW attacking Danielle. "This isn't good."

"What is it?" the chief of police said. "She looks a lot like..."

"Yeah. She does." Tucker said with gritted teeth as one of the cameras showed Danny dodging the tank from down town and disabling its main gun while other cameras showed a full GIW invasion force moving to box them in. "And there he is leaping in to help her. He told me to stay out of this just before you called me..."

"Well, you know this better than any of us, Mister Foley. Any suggestions? Colonel Sawyer with Task Force Raven is rather eager to engage the Guys in White..."

The door was kicked in and everyone in the room reacted, the Chief of Police and Tucker being the two with the fasted reflexes, the Chief with his nine millimeter pistol in hand while Tucker had his ecto-pistol drawn and pointed at the two figures standing in the doorway. They held their weapons as the two individuals were pointing rifles back at them. "No one move," the first one said (Tucker recognized him as Operative Oscar) "This is a Guys in White operation to capture an artificial ghost of significant power. We are commandeering the city assets for this task."

"She's half ghost, fitwits," Tucker shot back as everyone started lowering their guns. "That means she's out of your jurisdiction, per Congress' amendment of the Federal Anti-Ecto Control Act that entered effect three days ago. That means that for the purposes of the law, she's human. You have no authority in this area unless local authorities call you in or they are wanted like any other human criminal."

"Do we need to audit the city's tax records?" Operative Kilo threatened angrily.

At this point, another door opened and a tired looking agent stumbled in, though not of the Guys in White. "Hey, guys, drop the tax threat, I'm here for the IRS helping them sort out the mess Vlad left the city in financially. The town's off limits for audit threats like that until we get everything figured. Thanks guys." He entered the file room again and Tucker smirked at the Guys in White.

"So. You were saying?"

The two agents growled as they turned. "Fine, don't help us, but if that clone gets away, it's all on you." The two stormed out and the Chief of Police looked at Tucker.

"Why are the GIW so ticked about this that they're sending tanks down town? And who's the clone?"

"It's a long story, and it's not my place to share." Tucker answered. "But... long story short, more of Vlad's madness."

He blinked, then sighed putting a hand to his face. "That man was one seriously fucked up fruit loop..."

XXX

XXX

"Danielle! Where are you?!" Danny shouted as he landed on main street, having lost track of Danielle and Valerie when they broke off. People were screaming and heading indoors to find shelter from the attack, leaving Danny to wonder just how much chaos had just been unleashed by Danielle coming to Amity Park with a GIW battalion there. There was another tank closing in on him and he acted quickly, leaping into the air before freezing the barrel of the tank with a wave of ice energy. "Come on," he complained as he caught a GIW disc grenade and hurled it back to its thrower, knocking the armored soldier into a nearby trash can. By the looks of it, he had landed in a fairly clear area with few GIW soldiers and saw one coming towards him.

Danny slid to the side as the GIW soldier charged him with one of their glowing blue swords and laughed at how dorky they looked. _What, do they think they're Jedi or something?_ "Seriously, a sword? That's the best you have?" He dodged the slash and blasted the soldier in the back, knocking him forward into a parking meter and spilling quarters across the sidewalk. He turned when he felt something white hot cut through his right arm... and lost his sense of feeling below his elbow. Screaming and collapsing onto a knee, he held the spectral stump of his right arm in shock as he looked up, realizing that the GIW's blades were made from some sort of anti-ghost material that not just cut through him and hurt, but actually went far enough to _sever_ his limbs!

"Time's up, ghost brat," the soldier said as his screams started to subside and he raised the sword and pointed it right down at him for a finishing plunge...

XXX

Danielle had lost track of Danny when they were forced to split from the tank attack. The tank that had fired on them was in her sights and she realized she had a chance to take it down and the escorting infantrymen with it. She smirked as she turned intangible and phased into the ground, coming up right under the grenadier and phased his backpack off of him. He whirled around, reaching for his grenades when he realized his pack was completely missing as she floated above the group.

"Looking for this?" Danielle asked as she pulled one of the grenades out and hurled the disc shaped explosive onto the top of the tank. It detonated harmlessly, tank armor being far tougher than civilians gave it credit for, but it scattered the infantry escort. Danielle smirked and phased into the tank, noting that this one lacked anti-ghost shielding, and set the entire set of charges to cook off as the two-man crew looked at her in horror as she leapt back out. Above, she saw the two crewmen leaping out of the tank as it detonated within and the viewports blew out.

She grunted as she took a blast to the leg and crashed down to the street and looked up to see one of the tank crew had shot her with an ecto-pistol. Gritting her teeth as he fired again, she raised an energy shield to stop the blast before dropping it and firing her own, knocking the gun out of his hand. The other crewmen had rushed her and slugged her, but she simply let go and allowed the punch to pass through her ectoplasmic form before she solidified it again and uppercut the crewman, knocking him backwards. _Now, why do I need to actively weaken my form for humans but not for bullets?_ She wondered before attributing it to bullets having sufficient velocity and blasted the other crewman again to keep him down before she saw Danny in the street over, collapsed and clutching his arm in pain...

... and a Guy in White soldier standing over him ready to kill. She sprang down the long connecting alley, flying at full speed.

XXX

The GIW soldier with a sword was about to take the final plunge with the sword to end him, only for a green energy strike to hit him and knock him back. Danny began regaining feeling of his arm as he looked up to see Sam jumping in, blasting the soldier in the face again with her Fenton wrist ray before kicking him in his sword hand, knocking the blade to the side before she knocked him out with a third shot.

"Danny, are you alright?!" Sam shouted as she hurried over and looked at the green trail of ectoplasm between his right elbow and the rest of his arm. He barely noticed the Fenton Phone in her ear as he looked up at her.

Biting back the pain, he muttered something incomprehensible that was supposed to be a reprimand for her jumping in, but Sam just started moving his severed forearm to him. He looked at it, stopping his incoherent babbling as he realized that maybe he could reconnect it... if he could split his spectral form, certainly reattaching a limb would be easy? He focused the same way he did when stretching and contorting his body into unbelievable angles.

It worked, and his arm was reattached with a brief jolt of searing pain. It still hurt where he had been cut and he was fairly certain that he would be weak there for a while from all the ectoplasm that had spilled out, but he had functionally healed. He smiled to Sam, "Thanks Sam. Now, get out of here before the Guys in White try to..."

"Hold it right there- OW!" The two turned to see a GIW soldier with a rifle being knocked out by Danielle shooting him in the back with a dual burst of plasma as she came speeding out of the alley that had connected to the street where they had separated. Sam passed Danny one of the Fenton Phone headsets and he slipped it into his ear.

_"Phantom, this is Colonel Sawyer, Task Force Raven. Do not approach the GCN site, I repeat do not approach the GCN site. The Guys in White are blockading it, and they're using it as a staging area to bring in more troops."_

"More troops?" Danny asked as he saw GIW jets flying towards the GCN site and paradropping more soldiers into Amity Park. "You gotta be kidding me. Alright, I have to end this, now, before the whole city turns into a warzone!"

_"We called the National Guard, they're on their way down and they're not happy that the GIW is essentially attacking a city just to get you."_ Sawyer sounded like he was enjoying the idea of the National Guard showing up and putting lead into the GIW, and would probably be more than happy to attack them.

"No, we can't turn this into a civil war, not even the start of one!" Danny shouted as he pushed himself back up, mind racing as he planned on trying to find a way to end this. "Call the National Guard off, call off everything you can. Okay, maybe get the Air Force to ground the GIW jets before they strafe the city, but this can't escalate!"

_"Son, they're attacking your home town!"_

"No, they're here for one person. If we can get her out of here, the Guys in White will break off to follow!"

_"Danny, the Guys in White are going too far."_ Tucker cut into the conversation. _"Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum just stormed here trying to assume control of Amity Park's assets to hunt you, including APPD SWAT. They've crossed the line a couple times now."_

"What?" Danny shouted as he saw a GIW soldier trying to pop out cover to shoot him and fired a bolt of ice at the soldier, freezing his armor solid save for his head. "Tucker, don't let anyone from Amity Park's police start going after the Guys in White. Danielle, come on, we need to move! Sam, stay out of the fight, I don't want you getting hurt..." He was about to launch into the air when Sam grabbed him by his left hand and tugged hard.

"Danny, don't give me that shoulder the world spiel again," Sam snarled at him and gestured towards the statue that had been set up commemorating his heroics for the whole Disasteroid mess. "You don't have to shoulder it all alone. The Guys in White..."

"... are going to destroy the town if you oppose them." Danny cut back as he tried to break her grip without turning intangible. "You saw how willing they were to go get Gregor, or Elliot, or whatever the heck his name was. Do you want them to do that to the whole town? Do you want all those deaths on our heads because we escalated this?"

"No, but they're already on thin ice! Let us help you, Danny, we're your friends!"

"Look, you don't need to do all this for me," Danielle said, "I'll just flee to the Ghost Zone or something. They can't touch me there."

"No way," Danny answered, amazed that they were still arguing with them. "I'm not letting them force you into the Ghost Zone... Duck! Another tank!"

Everyone turned as another GIW tank rolled towards them and fired. Danny and Danielle reacted quickly, raising a shield when they saw Valerie coming in from above, dodging a half squad of GIW soldiers with jet packs and dropping a smoke grenade on the tank itself. She came flying out of the black smoke, but the loud clangs told him that some of her pursuers had crashed. Only two other GIW jet infantry came out after her and the tank was unable to get a targeting lock through the smoke.

Danielle shot over to the two soldiers, grabbing one and throwing him into his partner and the two crashed into the street and their jetpacks were broken in the landing. Meanwhile, Danny shot towards the tank and phased into it, finding two GIW soldiers in there. He smirked at them and smacked them both in the face before they could grab any weapons and crashed them into the inside of the hull before flying out, leaving the tank useless with unconscious crewmen.

"Danny, come on!" Valerie shouted, "We need to keep moving, there's a bunch of Guys rolling towards us and they mean business!"

_"Dude,"_ Tucker said in the headset, _"Just let us help..."_

"Then help by making sure no one gets hurt in the crossfire and by having the city's emergency services ready to help anyone who's hurt!" Danny shot back into the ear piece. "If I fight through the whole GIW, the city will get torn apart in the crossfire! I am not going to let that happen!" He blinked as he suddenly had a moment of realization. A plan that could work, spare Amity Park from much of the damage, and hopefully allow him to chase off the Guys in White and possibly even get them off of his tail for a good long while. It was a long shot, and he would be taking a major step towards something he had sworn against, but people were in danger and he could not think of a better plan.

"Tuck, I have an idea. Can you plug me into city-wide speakers?"

_"Yes, but I need a minute to reroute the frequency. Why?"_

"Yeah Danny," Sam asked as she hurried towards him and used her wrist ray to stun a GIW disc grenadier trying to hit Valerie from behind. "What's your plan?"

"I'm going to call out the GIW to a more remote area, then wail on them." Danny answered as he and Danielle dropped behind a bench as Kilo and Oscar came charging towards them. Kilo slipped out a blue square and hurled it towards Danielle. "NO!" he shouted as he recognized it as an Anti-Ecto Sapper, a device he had firsthand experience with during his first encounters with the GIW when he spent a brief tenure as the 'million dollar ghost', courtesy of Vlad.

Danielle screamed as her powers were temporarily shorted out and she collapsed, still in her Phantom form. He turned towards her and put his hands on her to support her. "Danielle! Listen to me, you're going to be alright, your powers are just shorted out for a few sec..."

"Danny, DUCK!" Valerie shouted, her gun pointed right towards him. Danny did so and Valerie fired a flurry of ecto rounds towards Oscar and Kilo, forcing them into cover across the street. He lost track of Sam in the crossfire and rose, hands gripped in anger as he realized just what the GIW was trying to do to Danielle and it fully clicked in his mind.

"Give it up, ghost boy!" Oscar shouted as he hurled another Anti-Ecto Sapper towards him. Danny shot into the air over it and dropped down, hands glowing green as he landed in front of them while Valerie had ducked into cover to let her weapon cool down. Channeling his plasma into his fists, he punched both agents into a nearby wall, dust splattering out from where the two agents hit and cracked the wall. He chalked them still being able to move on sheer toughness or hidden enhancements under their suits.

"Leave. Now." Danny threatened as he kept his hands glowing. "Leave Amity Park, you're just going to get people hurt coming after Danielle."

"Only because you ghosts keep intruding on our reality!" Oscar bit back. "If anything, all of this is on your head! They should tear down that statue!"

"Maybe." Danny answered as Danielle and Valerie dealt with another squad of GIW light infantry and an armored personnel carrier with them, "But you're the ones rolling tanks and jets into town, not me, and not Danielle. She's done nothing to you guys, and I've held back with you a lot, but you're pushing it. Seriously pushing it." The APC skidded to a halt and almost tipped over as Danielle blasted the treads off with a high powered plasma blast. He curled his lip in response to the sight. "Okay, Danielle's fired at you guys, but only in self defense. So, what's it going to be?"

"Initiate Protocol M, Standard Rules of Engagement, Section Six Paragraph Twelve. 2nd Edition Abridged." Oscar stated, then the two operatives activated cuff blasters and Danny was sent flying back as he took two dozen small anti-ghost bolts to the chest and crashed into a nearby building, chunks of masonry falling from how hard he hit it.

"Okay then," Danny said irritably, "We do this the hard way!" He leapt towards them and battle resumed.

XX

Valerie dropped from her jet sled and dropped onto the roof, the jet sled dematerializing to wherever her Technus ghost hunting gear went when not in use. She ducked behind the building's greenhouse roof as a pair of GIW soldiers were blocking her access to the next roof where they were setting up what looked like a heavy anti-aircraft cannon. She was hazarding a guess that it was to knock them out of the sky, and needed to take it out. And the dozen soldiers escorting it.

_No sweat,_ she told herself dryly as she understood clearly that this was not _Doomed_ where she could respawn after getting shot full of holes or burned down where she stood. This was real, and the Guys in White were firing full power blasts from their ecto-rifles instead of the lower level ones she was using to avoid killing them. Amity Park already had a lot of blue smoke rising into the sky from that on top of Danny and Danielle disabling their vehicles.

She fired a quick burst from her ecto-rifle as she dove into cover, blue bolts crisscrossing over the roof top. One of the GIW soldiers was hit and collapsed, but the other one ignored his comrade's peril and fired at her. The two ducked into cover, a chimney top for Valerie and a billboard for the GIW soldier. She smirked as she activated one of the tech grenades that the suit supplied her with and fired a burst towards the billboard to keep the soldier pinned and moved closer to throw the grenade towards it. It slid towards the soldier as he stepped out of cover to fire a burst at her, but the grenade detonated and the shockwave knocked him across the alley gap and onto the next building, alerting the GIW soldiers setting it up that she was coming.

Valerie fired her rifle at the GIW soldiers to force them to scatter into cover, eating the rifle to its heat sink capacity. Strapping it to her back, she leapt over the gap and into the alley as the GIW soldiers recovered their courage and started firing at her. Dropping into the alley, her jet sled rematerialized and she shot out of it as the GIW soldiers ran towards the edge of the alley to try and fire on her.

Swooping around, Valerie came around and dropped herself behind the turret they were setting up and pulled out her pistol, shooting its controls out and disabling the gun. "Hostile just took out the White Battery cannon! Take her down and call in engineering!" the squad leader shout as Valerie took cover behind the crates that were near it.

"Okay, that's a gun down, now I need a way out of here..." Valerie muttered as she looked around and saw a service ladder. She glanced over her cover and was greeted with a volley of blue bolts. "Not going to make it unless..."

Something from the alley she had dropped from landed up top and Valerie had just enough time to see what looked like a glowing green energy ball explode. The GIW soldiers were distracted and she took the chance, springing to the service ladder and sliding down to the other alley, using a slacked grip on the bars to speed down and then tightened it to slow herself down until she dropped safely and sprinted out of the way.

"Nice one on the cannon," she heard someone say with reverberation in her voice and smiled as she saw Danielle.

"Thanks for the distraction." Valerie answered as she pulled the rifle over. "I'm just glad this thing is set to low power, because at this rate we'd be in for mass murder if the courts saw things with the Guys' glasses."

"Yeah." Danielle said sadly as she looked around, both at the damage and for more incoming GIW. "Alright, we better move before more goons show up."

"Agreed. Where's Danny?"

"He told us to meet him outside of town, at a place called Graveyard Hill. Ready to run?"

Valerie leapt up and reactivated her jet sled. "Let's go."

XX

"Where's the ghost boy? Where's the clone? Where's that stupid ghost hunter?" Kilo shouted into his earpiece. They had lost track of Phantom on the ground when he and his clone blasted them into an alleyway and blinded them with a series of exploding energy balls of ectoplasmic energy and fleeing.

_"Ghost hunter and clone sighted fleeing north!"_ A squad leader reported via radio. _"But she took out our White Battery and it helped her escape with one of those glowing energy balls!"_

"Call in an air strike to clear them out of the sky." Oscar ordered. "And Phantom?"

_"No wor... wait, hang on, we're getting an open frequency transmission."_

They turned to a nearby TV set and saw Danny appear in an indiscrete part of town. _"Guys in White, I think you know me. I'm addressing you guys, right here, in front of everyone. This madness has to end before anyone gets hurt."_ Kilo had to admit, he respected the force that the kid was able to project when sufficiently riled up._ "But you made it clear you would not stop this attack. So, let's be civilized about this and not get anyone else caught up in our fight. I'll be waiting for you at Graveyard Hill, just north of Amity Park proper. No civilians to get hurt there, no collateral damage to cause other than chewing up a nice hill and the trees."_

"Now why would we walk into an obvious trap?" Kilo asked. "He can't be serious."

_"In case you're doubting how serious I am, I'm going to bring attention to one of your claims a while back. That I never stayed around to fight you because I was too cowardly. Well, here I am, with clear coordinates of where I'm heading to take a stand against you. Now, are you the ones with enough guts to come and own up to your own words and your own crusade? I'll be waiting here until eight tonight. If I don't see you by then, I'll take that as you not having the courage to actually face me in an open fight like you claim you can."_ The glare behind the glowing green eyes was enough to make Kilo realize he was serious. _"Now, leave my town alone, and let's settle this feud once and for all without getting anyone else hurt."_

"Trace the signal." Kilo ordered. "Make sure he's actually heading there."

"Commencing White Magic Scan..." Oscar said as he relayed it to their Condor Jets in the air and the headset buzzed. "Confirmed, the ghost boy is heading north."

"Then let's move." He stood up and grabbed his rifle and a full satchel of grenades. "Call off all forces in Amity Park and divert everyone to the task. We need to show the world that the Guys in White can and will defeat the ghost boy at his own game, and that no ghost escapes our laws."

XX

"Is he **nuts**?!" Sam asked loudly as she sat with Tucker in the city hall, watching the broadcast. "I can't believe he did this. He just gave them the middle finger and dared them to come after him. Is he crazy?!"

"No." Tucker answered with a sigh. "He's just trying to protect Danielle, and us. Just like that statue out there holding up the world, he's trying to take on all the responsibility."

Sam sighed, putting a hand to her forehead. "Why do the Guys in White even want Danielle anyways? Bargaining chip? Experiments?"

"Experiments, I assume." Tucker said as he continued typing into the computer. "Now I just want to know what Danny has in mind to stop them. He's got a pair of jet fighters, tanks, and lots of infantry coming right at him. And then there's a larger jet running mission control."

She paused as an image played in her head. She had seen it once before, and remembered Danny's rather stupid remark towards seeing the same image. One shout, and an entire force of armor and air support taken down in an orgy of senseless violence and murder. A small taste, she knew, of what had happened there, but it was an image that stuck to her mind, reminding her just what could have easily happened with Danny. She walked towards the window and could see the hill in the distance and the whole force of Guys in White marching towards it with their dozen tanks and battalion of infantry, the entire force in Amity Park.

"Danny, please," she whispered, not even sure who she was talking to, "be careful."

XXX

"So what's the plan?" Danielle asked as they took up a position in the hill's unique selling point: it was sloped sharply on all but one side, and that one side was very gentle in its slope. No cover save for trees, but they were so sparse on that side that tanks would have no problem rolling up. This had made it a hell of a difficult hill to take in the paintball matches that some local students loved doing, but it also lead to some of the more epic matches. "We're kind of exposed and we have a three hundred men strong battalion coming right for us."

"The plan's simple," Danny explained, mentally trying to prepare his last chance to offer the Guys in White. "When they roll up, I challenge them. Valerie tells us when they funnel everything in, then you both get behind me and cover your ears." He was just glad the news choppers would stay away, and had instead resorted to long distance camera work from outside the combat area, courtesy of Tucker using the technical mayoral authority he had to keep them clear. Too much collateral damage had happened already, and now he was going to settle this. _I'm just glad mom and dad are out of town today talking to a client, I don't want them to see this while in town..._ He knew he would have to explain everything to them, but for now, he had to protect Danielle.

"You don't have to do this, you know," he said as he looked up. "I can handle this alone."

"I know," Valerie answered, "but I'm not leaving Danielle to those punks. They'll just cut her up in a lab or melt her down like Vlad tried to do."

He noticed Danielle shiver and turned to reassure her. "Don't worry about it, Danielle, I won't let them do that to you."

"I know," she answered. "But, wouldn't it be easier to just slip into the portal now?"

"It would, but I already issued out a big challenge to them." Danny explained. "Look, if you two want to dodge out, now's the time. I'll stand on my own, and I'll stand a good chance at it. You don't have to stay with me."

"Hey, you're doing this for me," Danielle answered. "I'm not abandoning you."

"I think you know my position on this, Danny. I'm with you." Valerie was doing another weapons check, making sure that all the heat had been vented from her various weapons and the power cells were still fully functional. Danny was left to wonder if she was fully behind this, or if she felt like she had little left to lose with how she was being treated at school. _I'm still asking way too much of her,_ he noted sadly.

The three looked up at the approaching GIW battalion and he exhaled softly, realizing that this was it. At the fore of the unit was Operatives Kilo and Oscar. Valerie leapt into the air into her observational position and radioed to him; _"Yeah, they're funneling, but not everything yet. I think they're going to try and spearhead in... wait, I'm seeing something... is that a white flag?"_

Danny frowned as he narrowed his eyes and saw it, one of the soldiers was waving a white flag and the whole force stopped about four hundred yards away and the soldier with the white flag, four more of their light infantry, and Operatives Kilo and Oscar came forward. Danny looked to Danielle and nodded. "I'll talk to them." He walked up about seventy five meters, and the GIW meeting party stopped there.

"This is your last chance to surrender." Kilo stated. "If you do not surrender by the time we return to the battalion you see, we will roll in and you will be destroyed if necessary to acquire the clone."

"What do you want with Danielle?" Danny asked. "Do you want to cut her up molecule by molecule? Forget it, not on my watch."

"Why do you care so much for a clone?" Oscar asked. "It seems like a waste. So it is an opposite sex..."

"_She_." Danny cut in.

"... clone made with your DNA. So what? She has no rights. She is not an American citizen."

"Maybe." He answered as he realized that technically speaking, they were right as no one ever considered how clone rights would work since such technology was essentially impossible to the scale that had happened. "But she's a human as much as I am. She was, after all, born out of my DNA. So it was a test tube instead of a womb, does it matter? The bottom line is, this ends here, and you're going to back off."

"Please, what could you do? You always flee from us in battle." Kilo retorted.

"Think about it, and what you now know. You know, whether you like it or not, that I was always trying to help people. Maybe I was just trying to get away from you before you caused damage like what happened today? Or maybe I didn't want to hurt people just doing their jobs? I mean, in theory we could of been on the same team. But this... this crosses the line. I'm going to stop you here, or die trying." He paused a moment, then amended his statement with a _completely_ important (yeah right) distinction. "Well, die all the way or again, depending on how you look at it."

"That can be arranged." Oscar stated and the GIW soldiers turned and walked away, and Danny resisted the urge to just blast them there and now. Vile as they were acting, he would not violate one of those unspoken rules that differentiated those trying to be civilized and those who would abuse civilization to their own ends. He paced back, bracing himself mentally for that fact that today, he might have to kill. And with just over three hundred people coming in, he had a lot of targets to pick from. A lot of families to tear apart, a lot of friendships to end, a lot of potential noobs for the Ghost Zone, and a lot of tragedies waiting to happen.

"Didn't go well?" Danielle asked.

"No. They won't give up, and neither will I. Danielle, I'm sorry it's come to this, but if I go down, I want you to move as fast as you can to Fenton Works. Tell Jazz to unlock the portal, and flee into the Ghost Zone. If that doesn't work, phase into the GCN and think of anywhere, you can warp around the network with that. Valerie, I don't want you to stick around and try and pull me out. Just tell me when they funnel, and get out of here."

"Danny..." Valerie sounded pained, like she was trying to talk him out of a suicide mission.

"No buts. This is going to be a smack down that I should never of had to deliver, and I don't want you in trouble for it."

She smiled faintly, "I know, but I'm not leaving a friend behind. Besides, Sam and Tucker can protect Amity Park plenty well without us."

Danny paused, suddenly feeling horrible, a pain stabbing him in the heart as he realized he betrayed their trust. He had never told Sam and Tucker the full details of his plan. He did it to protect them in case the GIW brought it to court, but they of all people deserved to know why he was doing this and what he was doing. He closed his eyes, "I'm sorry..." he muttered as the Guys in White rolled forward. Raising his voice, he nodded to Danielle. "Ready to hold the line for a few minutes, cuz?"

"Always." Danielle answered with a faint smile. The Guys in White rolled in and the two started blasting back, keeping the Guys in White from just lighting up everything. It went on for a minute, a volley back and forth of blasts which Danny and Danielle occasionally stopped with shields, but Danny was doing less than Danielle. He had to save his energy...

_"They're funneling in. Now or never."_

"I understand. Get out of the way and cover your ears."

He took steps forward, time slowing down as ecto-weapon blasts shot towards them. But it was not the manipulation of Clockwork that slowed time down, but his own mind frantically working out what was coming. He saw Oscar and Kilo leading the charge, he could hear them shouting to take him down. He inhaled and shouted at them:

"Most people have a problem of power." Danny shouted defiantly as he fired an bolt of ecto energy to pick off a grenadier before he threw his grenade at Danielle. "Of not being strong enough. Me? I have the exact opposite. I have to be careful of breaking something, of hurting _someone_." He turned intangible as blasts phased through him and struck the hillside. "That's why I always ran, Guys in White. That's why I never fought you any more than I absolutely had to."

The Guys in White looked at each other and took up firing positions, charging weapons for the mother of all execution volleys. They had no idea what he was about to do, and how much trouble they were in.

"Well, I guess you want to see my full capability, of seeing why I was always avoiding you." Danny stood, legs spread shoulder length apart and arched his back like he was preparing to scream. He focused on his anger, the anger at the Guys in White for forcing things to this, his hate for them trying to hurt Danielle. He called up his pain, the pain knowing that he had crossed a line he would never return from, the pain still in his right elbow from where it had been cut off by a GIW soldier earlier, the pain of all the times he changed from full biological human to becoming a half ghost and vice versa. And he called up his defiance. His defiance to the idea letting the Guys in White at Danielle, and as he heard a certain mocking laugh that had awoken such defiance before and ended up forcibly teaching him to respect the full nature of the power he had in his lungs, he inhaled as deeply as he could.

"Take him down and get the clone!" Oscar shouted. And with that, Danny screamed as he threw his head forward, arms arched behind him to his sides in a stance that had become all too familiar to him.

"Now _leave her __**ALONE!**_"

A horrid shriek dominated the landscape, and a horrific moan echoed across the hillside, the last word of his defiant statement thundering into the world as he unleashed his full fury and the full power that a half ghost could muster.

Yet deep under it all, he felt like he was ready to break down and cry. Cry at the pain that he was about to cause, and all the suffering he would always remember, born of trying to protect a friend... no, family, from the designs of those of ill intent. Ready to cry realizing that he had taken a giant step closer to something he had sworn he would never allow to happen, even if he took such a step with noble intent. He had used his Ghostly Wail on human beings.

XXX

**End Chapter**

_- No author's notes for this one other than thanks to popie92, chadtaylor020 and Writeous for their reviews._


	3. Chapter 3

_"By all the... sir! We were recording Phantom's power level, he just spiked to twelve on the scale! Negative, this is not broken equipment. Affirmative, I understand the scale only goes to ten... but... just look at the readings! They're off the charts! They dropped to a normal ten almost immediately after, but... sir, our scale is either far too small, or Phantom is stronger than we gave him credit for. I mean, he's only registered on an 8.5 since the Disasteroid!"_

- Guys in White combat observer in a White Condor Jet watching live combat information coming from the GIW forces in Amity Park after realizing just how much power Danny Phantom had in him.

**Chapter 3**

The moan on Graveyard Hill was horrific enough, enough to shatter the discipline of all the soldiers arrayed to attack, but the green wave of energy and the constant gale kin to those of the strongest storms made it seem like the least of one's worries when caught in the Ghostly Wail. Even Valerie flying above and outside of the actual wail had been forced to cover her ears even with her helmet's aural protection. The wail was... wrong, like it was the call of C'thulu himself in its unnaturalness, its defiance of sanity.

It howled like Ragnarok, disoriented as the raising of the Palace of Pandemonium, resounded like clash of the Olympians against the Titans, screeched the cry of the Four Horsemen riding forth, thundered as the litany of plagues upon Egypt, sung of the Fright Knight's Soul Shredder. The tremors could be felt even in the air, rivaling a small earthquake in effect. And the glow, the ghastly green waves of energy highlighting just where the devastation came from. The horrific sound stood a grim reminder of just how lucky Amity Park was that the source of that power was on their side, was acting as its protector.

The Guys in White tried to fight back of course, but their weapons were useless and tactics in vain. Teal Ecto-Energy bolts bled into nothingness as the wail struck them, and several tanks had their main guns explode as they fired, which was quickly followed by the wail slowly but steadily stripping the tanks of their armor plating, soon followed by the steel guts of the war machines breaking apart.

Trees were uprooted and snapped, grass dug away as if by a giant knife and sent tumbling in large clods at the soldiers. Two GIW jets streaked in to try and attack, but their munitions were caught in the wail and the pilots were forced to bail out, thrown away from the area by the howling wind of the aberrant noise still deafening everyone as their parachutes deployed. Soldiers fell backwards like rag dolls, landing and bouncing low along the ground as they learned the hard way just how out of their league they were as blue smoke from their own detonating weapons added to the devastated look that the landscape was taking on.

In Amity Park's city hall, Sam and Tucker watched the distant recordings with silent awe and horror. They knew Danny had rarely, if ever, used such power in combat, but when he did they knew that he was putting everything in. Yet, they also knew that he was showing the world that he was even more powerful than they had pegged him previously, and were grimly reminded how that power had been gained, as was Jazz as she saw the news from home. As for Amity Park, rumors had spread around before of a powerful ability that could cause significant devastation being in Phantom's arsenal, after all he had fought ghosts with such power before such as Vortex, but now they had seen it actually used and knew he had that capability.

In his lair, Clockwork smiled as he saw Danny do it. While the Observants were in fear that he was now going down the path that they had spent so much time worrying over and in the act set into motion a new arms race, he was proud of his temporal responsibility. Although all Ghostly Wails were catalyzed with full force, the source of their stunning disorientation associated with being near it, what came after was in the hands of the user if they had control. When the actual damage done by his acts was tallied, it would tell a sobering and to some surprising message on the state of this young half ghost: that he was in control even if he was tearing himself apart over the act to the point where his thoughts were towards the fact he had used it at all rather than controlling the power behind it.

XXX

**Graveyard Hill, Amity Park**

Danny let go at last as he expended the Ghostly Wail, the moan ceasing and the devastation ended. The Guys in White were no longer hammered by the Ghostly Wail and stopped flying backwards. He collapsed to his knees as his Phantom form flaked away as if it was a layer of paint, leaving him disoriented and blinking rapidly as he realized that he had drawn it out longer than intended and held it just long enough to force him to revert, cold sweat pouring down his body. Danielle helped him up and he nodded, changing back to Phantom form with the two familiar white rings passing by as he walked towards the devastated Guys in White battalion.

Valerie flew down and landed next to him, staring at him in awe and... he recognized it: fear. Not the same fear she had shown when hunted by Skulker in the Ghost Zone, but it was a subtler one when she saw powerful ghosts and Danny had yet to jump into the fight long before Technus gave her the armor she now wore.

"I'm... sorry." Danny managed to putter out as he continued catching his breath and kept walking towards the Guys in White. He knew what he had done: even with the control he had gained over the Ghostly Wail and his ability to spread its power out over time instead of just firing everything left in his reserves, he had decimated the Guys in White. He was the one responsible for it. And anything that happened to the men and women, the _people_, in that battalion, it would be his doing.

He stood in front of Kilo and Oscar as the entire force was groaning and trying to get back onto their feet. Oscar saw him and reached for a pistol. Danny pointed a finger to fire a low powered, harmless plasma bolt to knock it away, but he did not have any energy left to do so. Fortunately, Valerie caught the movement and fired a magnetic grappling hook from her gauntlet and pulled the weapon away, ripping out the heat sink and discarding it to the side. The two operatives glared death at him as he stood in front of them.

"Now." Danny started as he looked down at them, swallowing briefly to wet his throat bled dry by his display of power, "Now do you understand why I never stood my ground against you beyond what I had to do? Why I always tried to avoid you instead of fighting you?"

Kilo tried to activate a wrist weapon to attack him, but Danny kicked it and put his boot down on Kilo's wrist, pinning him there and breaking the weapon before removing his foot. He then picked the two up and turned them around so they could look at the devastation that the usage of the Ghostly Wail had caused. The entire battalion was in ruin, soldiers with broken helmets and gas masks trying to rip the helmets off to breathe, most of them just lying where they landed after being rag dolled in the attack. Tanks were broken down to their bare bones of steel lining and plating with the crews in a tangled mess. The trees and ground itself had been uprooted, several of the GIW soldiers stuck under fallen branches or had landed in the roots.

"This is why!" Danny explained angrily as he let go of them. "Because I have the power to do _this_! Now imagine that that wasn't me trying to tone it down and let the power out over a longer period of time so I didn't kill you outright. I could have destroyed all of you, pasted you into something resembling red silly putty, but I didn't."

The two Operatives scowled at him. "So you're a coward?" Oscar asked as he reached for an Anti-Ecto Sapper in his soiled suit, but Danielle shot it out of his hands and the square device uselessly landed on the grass and Oscar grabbed his wrist in reflex.

"No. I'm just not the bad guy here. Now, let's get your wounded tended to and your troops out of the fire." Danny started walking towards the nearest GIW soldier, whose helmet had been shattered, leaving a scarred face that stunned Danny: the soldier was extremely young, possibly fresh from high school, and it was too easy for him to see himself or Tucker or Sam in the same position. The soldier grunted, crushed under the weight of a destroyed tree branch. Danny reached in, turning his hands and then the soldier intangible, and pulled him out before his powers fizzled out again. "Are you alright?"

"W... why?" the soldier asked in surprise.

"Because I'm not the bad guy. And I never will be." He turned to Valerie, who was pulling another soldier from the wreckage of a tank with Danielle. "Valerie, make sure the hospital gets some ambulances out here, these people need doctors!"

"Already sent the Nine-One-One; Tucker activated the city's ghost emergency protocols to get everything up and the National Guard's vanguard units are coming with paramedics. They'll be here soon!" Valerie answered as Danielle threw the broken remains of bent steel off of the soldiers and Valerie pulled the soldiers out.

"Good." Danny answered as he checked another downed soldier, a disc grenadier who had landed awkwardly next to a tree trunk. The soldier's helmet had been shredded off, and the neck guard was nowhere in sight. Danny checked the pulse when he noticed the soldier was not moving and smelled something that reminded him of the Nasty Burger.

There was no pulse, and Danny almost collapsed as he realized what he had done, and realized that no one was ever prepared to do such a thing.

XXX

**Several Hours Later (8:00 PM)**

**Fenton Works**

"Danny, it's not your fault." Jazz said to her little brother, in the lab with his head buried in his hands and knees as he was crouching by the sealed Fenton Portal. Danny had come back in a mess, having stayed at Graveyard Hill to help until there was nothing more he could do to recover the downed GIW soldiers.

Valerie had headed home, and Danielle was standing nearby quietly. The final tally of deaths was under thirty, and all the wounded would recover. All the casualties were GIW, no innocents had been hurt. The coroners had ruled that the deaths were from debris flying all over the place rather than the Ghostly Wail itself, though some of them argued that a psychological shutdown akin to a morale plummet caused by it might have decreased the chances of survival for the GIW unit as a whole. Sam and Tucker were both trying to come over, but Tucker was stuck fixing the city's emergency systems so he would not longer be needed to activate them and Sam was in a politically violent spat with her parents. Valerie said she had to talk to her father about what had happened, and their parents were still out of town.

The news was abuzz about the whole mess. Officially, the GIW were claiming that Danielle was a rogue specter who was to be neutralized, but other elements of the state government were raising a storm, along with the governments of the other states they had attacked Danielle in, over the GIW's liberal use of heavy weapons in populated areas and their willingness to attack American populations in their rampage, namely essentially besieging Amity Park in their efforts to get Danielle even if they did not attack the local police force. Supporters from both sides had been vocal, but nothing concrete had happened yet and the higher up politicians were, in a rare moment of restraint, waiting to get more details before making statements beyond the basic 'need to make sure anyone hurt is tended to and prayers to the families of those lost' type.

"Yes it is my fault!" Danny shouted back, not assured by the details of what had happened or the events that had followed up to this point. "I used my Ghostly Wail on them! I acted no better than _he_ would, and I pretty much just took a giant step towards it!"

"No, you did not." Jazz said sternly, grabbing him by the shoulders and staring into his blue eyes as she realized she had to shake this from him before it developed into a serious psychological disorder. "You used the only power in your arsenal that could do the job, and you managed to control it! Danny, what would have happened if you were unable to control the Ghostly Wail, if you could only use full power with it?"

"The entire GIW force would have been wasted." Danny answered slowly. "They would of all been _killed_..."

"Exactly. And what did you do?"

"Killed some of them..."

"But not all of them." She pointed out. "You were in control, Danny. Yes, some of them died, but you were doing everything you could to avoid it, and the coroners said clearly that the deaths were from damage, not the wail itself." Not that she was reassured by that thought either; the idea that her little brother had killed did not sit well with her, especially knowing about what he could have become. Danny had explained in detail to her, Sam, and Tucker about what happened before Clockwork intervened, both the fight at the Nasty Burger and the rough knowledge of ten years of a 'Dark Phantom' running around. Considering Danny had all that to shoulder, she pegged him as made of sterner stuff than she had guessed knowing what he was dealing with already.

"I still killed them, Jazz, no matter what the doctors said." He was almost crying at this point, but tears had yet to form. "The wail caused whatever killed them to kill them. That means it's my fault!"

Jazz put her hands on her little brother's shoulders to try and comfort him. "I know, but you did everything you could to avoid pushing it that far. You gave the Guys in White a lot more chances to stop their attack then most would. They just refused to back down."

"I know," Danny answered, "But they also had no idea I had the Ghostly Wail up my sleeve; I've never used it in public like that before. To them, it was probably all desperate trash talk to try and avoid an unwanted fight over Danielle..."

She was not sure if Danny even realized Danielle was in the lab as she glanced at the girl. Jazz wanted to take time to take a look at her, but she was concerned for Danny at the moment. She had so many questions she had to get answered, like _where the hell_ _did Danielle come from,_ why she looked so much like Danny, and why she brought the whole Guys in White organization down on Amity Park trying to get to Danny besides the fact they were hunting her.

"_Shit_, Danny!" The curse caught her off guard as much as it must have caught him off guard. "You told me yourself that you were so wound up in the fact you used the Wail at all that you weren't consciously focused on lowering the power of it! If you can keep the power of the ghost equivalent of a nuclear bomb on a low setting without focusing on it, that means that lowering the power was instinctive! That your intent was never to completely kill them, just force them to stop!"

"Does my intent matter when the results are the same?" He asked, voice cracking from stress. "Even if I was focusing on lowering the power, there's only so much I can do to the Ghostly Wail. You can't turn a nuke into a harmless pop toy no matter how small it is. It's impossible to turn it purely into some sort of supersonic stun that harms no one, it's the nature of the power. _I crossed the line_ using it, no matter how much I tried to dial it down!"

"No. The Guys in White crossed the line when they went after Danielle. She's half ghost, right?" Jazz asked, glancing up at Danielle, who nodded.

"Yeah..." Danny answered slowly as he tried to understand what she was going for.

"That means they were in the wrong attacking her, since half-ghosts are considered human for the purposes of the law. That means the Guys in White were trying to capture a human to rip apart molecule by molecule or whatever they were going to do. You gave them several chances to give up the mad attempt, then acted to neutralize them so they could not carry it out." She stood up and grabbed Danny's hands, pulling him to his feet. "You acted with more restraint than most people would act with, and you were still caring about collateral damage and innocent people being hurt the whole way. You were even spending more time stressing over hurting your _enemies_ than most would stress about hurting their friends! That's the _exact opposite_ of what _he_ would do!"

The somber glance down told Jazz that he knew exactly which 'he' she was referring to, though did Danielle know? Jazz ruled against that as Danielle seemed somewhat confused by the whole thing.

Danny finally sighed. "You're right, Jazz, but even if you are, it's still my fault and my responsibility. I... I should go to the funerals for the dead soldiers, pay my respects, my apologies... if they'd even let me anywhere close to it..."

"Danny," Danielle cut in uncertainly, "If anything it's my fault for not shaking them first. I figured that once you showed up, they'd back off. I didn't think I'd be endangering anyone."

"No Danielle, you were just trying to get away from being attacked, but I was the one who went that far. Upping the scale was my responsibility." He answered, catching Jazz off guard with how fast he pulled himself around. _There he goes again, shouldering the world,_ Jazz mused as she folded her arms and watched her little brother.

"Maybe, but I'm also basically coming to ask you for a lot of help." Danielle pointed out, not giving any ground and finding her ground. "So there's a lot of responsibility on my shoulders for all of this too."

Danny sighed and threw his hands into the air in mock surrender. "Alright, I get it, you guys want me to pull myself together. So maybe it isn't really my fault that they pushed that hard, but it's still my responsibility. I'm not going to forget this."

"I'd be worried if you did," Jazz said softly. "The fact that you are worrying about it says a lot about your character, that you aren't willing to casually throw people away. Stop antagonizing over going dark, you're showing that you aren't!"

Danielle glanced between the two awkwardly as Danny finally changed the subject, though Jazz knew that it was only temporarily suspended, not gone. It would take time for Danny to recover and move on, but another topic might help Danny focus and give him time to process. "So, when are mom and dad coming home?"

"Not for another hour, but they called while you were helping clean up to tell me when they'd be back. They don't know what's happened yet." Jazz explained. Their parents knew all of Danny's abilities, so the Ghostly Wail was no shock to them, but the whole battle would have been. "Now, Danny, I need to ask... who is she?"

"Uh..." Danny started, glancing to Danielle. "Do you want me to explain it, or?..."

"You can explain it if you want," Danielle answered with a shrug, "I'll cut in if you forget anything." Jazz could not help but shake a sense that they were more alike than anyone would guess. She looked so much like Danny, _and_ she was half-ghost too? She knew weird things existed, after all, the idea of ghosts even existing was considered lunacy just short of a year ago, and now it was commonly accepted fact. But even she knew that half ghosts were so rare that the only lore that existed on their abilities essentially boiled down to Danny, if only because Vlad never chronicled his development of power.

"Alright, where should I start?" Danny asked as he started pacing. "I suppose the best place to start is with Valerie. You know the original gear she had, the red suit and weapons that looked like knockoffs of the stuff our parents make? That was from Vlad, and was loaded with equipment that took scans of me and got a lot of data." That made some sense to Jazz, Vlad had secretly bought up various Fenton inventions for reverse engineering and would very much want to know what Danny was capable of, but what did that have to do with Danielle? _Unless..._

"So, using that, he was running a cloning project in Colorado, close to the Wyoming border." He continued, "He managed to make five clones; the first was essentially a skeleton missing everything below the spine. The second looked like me on a _really_ bad day and with a healthy dose of Incredible Hulk."

"Wait, _clones_?!" Jazz shouted as she realized what Danny was getting at, cutting him off as she started looking between Danny and Danielle repeatedly, the similarities between the two becoming closer and closer every glance. This was too much for her; it made _no sense_, how could Danielle be... "But... you're a he and she's a... a..."

"Female?" Danielle cut in with a hint of amusement. "Vlad tried to fix the stability by removing the Y chromosomes and just duplicating the X."

"_How the hell does that even work_?!" Jazz finally shouted, swearing that she was in a dream right now. She had to be in one; probably induced by Nocturne as payback for making his plans nothing more than a ghostly wet dream. After all, cloning was impossible, or at least cloning a human being, let alone a half-ghost. But, a nagging feeling in her mind reminded her that impossible had changed so much in the last year told her that she was freaking out too much.

"I don't know," Danny answered as he continued, probably figuring that the whole story might help. "Vlad seriously crossed the line with them. The third clone looked like me, but had to remain really small, like a little wasp."

"I was the forth one," Danielle added as Jazz put a hand to her head trying to understand. "I was a bit more stable, but I was still at risk of melting down spontaneously if I overused my powers. The fifth one, though..."

"The 'fifth one' was, as Vlad termed it, the 'good' clone." Danny closed his eyes. "He captured me and tried to force me to transform to get a DNA sample of me mid-morph."

"He shouldn't of gotten you though, but..." She inhaled. "I helped Vlad with that, shooting Danny in the back."

That phrase set Jazz's reflexes off, and before she even realized it she was holding an ecto-pistol and aiming it at Danielle, who was looking wide eyed at her with _Danny's_ eyes as the pistol whined in its powering cycle. Danny stepped between the two. "Jazz, wait!" he shouted before she could pull the trigger, "Don't shoot! Think this through, don't act on instinct!"

As her mind finally caught up to her body, Jazz looked at the pistol in horror and threw it to the side, the gun clattering along the floor and powering down. "I..." she inhaled sharply as the adrenaline started to ebb from her system and she fully understood what she had almost done. "I'm sorry, I... I don't know..."

"It's okay." Danielle said sadly. "I'd be slow to trust too with that information."

"She helped me in the end, though." Danny explained quickly, "and turned on Vlad. The other clone ended up melting after we knocked Vlad into it and wasted its containment, then I brought the whole lab down with my Ghostly Wail."

"He shrugged it off too, pretty much." Danielle cut in as she stepped out from behind him. "He was thrown like a rag doll and forced back to his human form, but once it ended he got back up and went ghost again."

"Yeah, but Sam and Tucker showed up in time to hit him and slip a Specter Deflector onto him." Danny added. "After that, she followed us back without us knowing and briefly overshadowed Lancer and Mom..."

Jazz folded her arms and scowled. She never liked overshadowing, even if it was an ability Danny used less and less as time went on and was a rare use in the first place. It reeked of possession to her, and in her mind it was a very dangerous prospect that made the Guys in White sound like a good idea, horrid execution included. To say nothing of Vlad's manipulations with it and rigging a whole election just by overshadowing the voters. "And she did this because?"

"Well, Danny, Sam, and Tucker were in a lot of trouble." Danielle explained. "What'd you do to them to get them that mad?"

"Skipped school for Lancer, and as for my parents, far as they knew we stole the Specter Speeder for a joyride, and wrecked it in the process." Danny supplied, gesturing to the mostly repaired vehicle sitting in the back of the lab.

"Again." Jazz commented in vague amusement. "Seriously, the number of times you borrow it borders on it being a team car."

"I left for a while after that, exploring the world, but my DNA was becoming unstable." Danielle explained, ignoring the jibe towards her genetic origin. "I actually ended up not going far; the Great Lakes was the farthest I got, then I had to start heading back."

"Unstable DNA?" Jazz asked. "How unstable are we talking here? Wait, you mean that melting down, don't you?"

"Yeah." Danny answered uneasily. "If she overused her powers, she would melt down like a puddle. How'd you run into Valerie anyways?" The question was directed towards Danielle.

"She was following me with a ghost scanner and almost got crushed in an unsafe building. I had to go ghost, turn us both intangible, then tackle her out of the way... then she cuffed me." Danielle seemed rather embarrassed at that.

"And you dated her?" Jazz asked with a raised eyebrow. "Seriously Danny, how'd you get past the 'waste Danny Phantom' part?"

Danny narrowed his eyes at her like he was trying to tell if she was serious or just giving him a hard time before continuing. "Valerie tricked Danielle into being unaware bait, and then shocked us both. Fortunately, I didn't shift back to my human side, but she gave Danielle to Vlad... and before you start worrying again, she had no idea that Vlad Masters and Vlad Plasmius was one and the same."

"Actually, she was under the impression I was hunting Vlad Masters."

"Yeah, Valerie said that. Anyways, I used that Ecto-Dejecto that dad was working on at the time to stabilize Danielle, then she kicked Vlad's butt. I had Valerie's help in getting her stabilized, though, and she kept Vlad off my back while I was helping Danielle, but Vlad pulled a duplicate trick to keep Valerie from figuring out the two were the same. Not that it mattered overmuch, the Disasteroid was only what, two weeks later?" Danny shrugged. "So yeah, that's the story. Danielle was originally created by Vlad as part of some insane project to get a perfect half-ghost son, and was made with my DNA."

Danielle gave him a dirty look and he shrugged. "Sorry, but I don't think the 'cousin' excuse is going to work anymore. And... okay, I'm just out of ways to describe the technical relationship."

"It's alright. I just don't like the idea of being someone's _thing_ or being talked about like I'm not human, intentionally or not." Danielle answered as her expression softened. The answer was innocent enough, but Jazz could hear the distaste under it. _Okay, clones... something pretty much unknown psychologically, but I'd put an inferiority complex as up there in possibilities if Vlad treated her poorly._

"How... did Vlad treat you?" Jazz asked before she could put the brakes on the question. "If you don't mind me asking," she added to hopefully make the question less intrusive.

The two glanced at each other uneasily, which sent a shiver up Jazz's spine as she suspected that it was abusive. Danielle finally answered, "He played nice up until I was refusing to overshadow Danny to try and force the transformation, then he pretty much treated me the way he really felt about me: a completely expendable pawn."

_Damn,_ Jazz thought, only being able to guess how horrible that was. Unhelpful as their parents were in many life issues, they at least cared about them even if they were caught up in their ghost hunting mania or their Christmas quarrel to be of much support. Being tricked by who she suspected was acting like a father figure when really she was just another expendable minion? The idea was beyond her ability to relate. "I'm... sorry, I didn't mean to drag up painful memories."

"It's hard to avoid them," Danielle answered. "I'm only a year old, tops. Vlad never even told me when I first became aware."

Jazz blinked, wondering how _that_ worked. Even _Star Wars_, soft sci-fi as it was, had given the clone troopers accelerated aging which did not just end when they fully matured. "How come you're still biologically twelve years old, then? Or... wait, you were created, er, born as a twelve year old?"

She shrugged. "I don't know, and honestly I don't care. I'm more concerned about if I'm going to grow up normally or of I'm stuck as a twelve year old forever. Biologically."

Now it was Jazz's turn to feel irony. _Yeah, biologically..._

Danny cut in: "Much as I'm glad you're here, Danielle, there's a bigger question that we need to answer. What now?"

"Vlad had an underground hideout here, not connected to his mansion. Given the Guys in White never busted into them, I think that they're still safe. I can always hang there." Danielle explained. "Or I could make a lair in the Ghost Zone; I'll probably need one anyways someday, so why not invest early?" Jazz had never missed some of the euphemisms that had developed with the regular Ghost Zone jaunts, and it seemed Danielle inherited some of those too. Or she had a different view on life, being born into the world as a half-ghost.

Danny curled his lips as he shook his head side to side like he was mulling over something. "Ya'know, investing early might be a good..." he shook his head rapidly. "Uh, yeah. Let's not do that if we can avoid it, Danielle. Ghost Zone food isn't what the Lunch Lady says it is. Actually, I'm pretty sure its poisonous to humans..."

XXX

**Manson House, Amity Park**

"Are you _serious_?!" Sam shouted. "You're really going to go there?"

"It's for your own good, Samantha," her mother said sternly. "You really should not be slumming with that hoodlum criminal."

_"CRIMINAL?!"_ She shouted, "Are you insane? The Guys in White..."

"... were trying to do their jobs in dealing with those foul demons," her father cut in, "and your friend just killed twenty three of them!"

"They attacked first, and he wasn't _trying_ to kill them!" Sam knew that was a weak defense. How could Danny have lost control and... _No, don't go down that road,_ she harshly told herself, _if he wasn't in control, the body count would be in the hundreds, not the low double digits. Once the tanks rolled in there was nothing he could do without letting the tanks roll free down town..._ "If he was trying to kill them, the body count would be a _lot_ higher. I know the powers he has, and that Ghostly Wail could of done that if he chose to have it do so." She knew, she had seen that body count first hand thanks to Clockwork's time travel shenanigans. But, that would just make her sound crazy to her parents who were already scowling at her. They were standing in the family room under the house itself where the big screen TV was playing the pro-GIW spin of the news, so anything that was not 'reasonably' connected to her own adventures was going to be useless with them.

"So you say. But he still tried to defy the law..."

"... you mean the overzealous maniacs in white armored suits who were firing tank weapons in an urban area to get one little girl? The same freaks whose idea of a raid is to just smash everything in sight on the faintest hint of a tip without even cross-referencing? The same maniacs who strafed an observatory with a giant attack jet when there were a bunch of students there, _me included_, just because they had a theory that they had found a ghost?! Oh, did I mention that he wasn't even the ghost they were going for, or a ghost at all?" Sam was hitting her stride now, voice rising and she was getting _pissed_ at her parents for trying to make her hate her own boyfriend. Yet, deep down, she was also troubled by the fact people had died at Danny's hand, no matter what the doctors said.

"Samantha Manson, settle down this instant!" her mother shouted at her. "There will be no talk of this demon-boy being not at fault here! Where do you think he is now that he has nothing more to do to try and fool the public into thinking he's a hero for smacking down honest government employees doing their job defending us from abominations like him?"

_"Abomination?!"_ Sam screamed back, "Do you even _know_ him besides your warped opinions on what ghosts in general are? Do you even know how seriously he takes the injuries every person takes in those ghost attacks, of what happens to people as a result?" She shook her head. "You don't know him, at all. If anything, he's probably in the middle of a nervous breakdown at the idea he killed people, because he knows better than both of you that if he jumped off a slippery slope like everyone thought he was at first, almost nothing could stop him! And you're here keeping me from trying to help him not turn into that wreck!"

In hindsight, Sam would later ruefully note, highlighting the raw power in Danny's reach was a bad move. "That's exactly the point," her father said. "If nothing can stop him, how would _you_ stop him if he tried to abuse you?"

"Your father is correct. We might not be able to stop you two from interacting at school, but you two will go on no more dates." Her mother was hitting her stride to, and Sam knew this would be a long, politically bloody night. "You, Samantha Manson, will learn to adjust yourself into a good girl and will no longer be throwing yourself into this ghost hunting."

"Hey, someone's gotta protect this place, and I'd rather take a non-portal route to the Ghost Zone protecting people than let the Guys in White rack up a body count of civilians caught in the crossfire of their idea of stopping ghosts!" Sam shouted back. "What, military not an option for me? Paramilitary, even. Come on, I've found something I'm good at. Sure, it's no permanent career, but it's not like you guys have one either. Is it that hard to be proud of your daughter for trying to save lives?"

"Save lives? Save lives?" her father retorted, scowling at her. "So those twenty three soldiers who are dead, lives saved by the boy corrupted to half-demon, huh?"

_"Enough!"_ another voice cut in and all three turned to see Sam's (maternal) grandmother sitting there on her scooter. The argument ended as they looked at the sudden backbone from the little old lady who was not even capable of walking anymore.

"Look at you three, arguing like straw men and women. Ignoring the good intent behind the other's views in your stubbornness." She drove her scooter forward and approached Sam. "Look at you, bubeleh, ignoring the intent behind the argument of your parents! They care for you, and only wish what's best for you even if you disagree with them." Her parents were looking smug for the moment.

"Your independent streak is a good thing, and I would be concerned if you did not find your own identity and let them mold you like clay." The elderly lady looked to her daughter and spouse who were nodding along like a tattle tale who was getting what the expected before suddenly stopping and realizing they were being countered too.

"As for you two; why must you assume the worst of her friends in spite of their responsibility? Why must you assume they are like the vain plastics of Casper High in spite of the fact that they have not taken advantage of the vulnerable state of mind you believe she holds? Of trying to restrain her from her friends by the law when their only crime is not fitting the horrifically _narrow_ views you hold?"

"But..." Sam's mother started when Grandmother Manson wheeled over quickly and put her hand up, cutting the counter off quickly.

"No buts. She may not be the model of sunshine you wish her to be in your care, but she is a better person than you give her credit for. Now, there will always be a political disagreement in this house, that much is clear, but we are still a family." The sternness in the old lady's voice quickly faded, though Sam knew that it was just waiting to be called up again. "That means we still watch out for each other, even if we disagree on the exact details."

"I..." Sam sighed and looked to her parents, wondering if she had not just shot part of herself into the Ghost Zone doing this. "Alright. I'm sorry, but I just have a hard time dealing with the fact that you never seem to trust me. Okay, I've had my bad moments, but how am I supposed to learn to recognize them when I'm sheltered and not given a chance to learn? I have to deal with my own mistakes sometimes, or I never learn from them."

Her parents looked at each other, stunned that she had actually just not only apologized sincerely, but even admitted they had a point. Her mother was first to come to her senses. "Apology accepted. We won't stop from pushing against it, but you are right, you have to learn some things yourself."

"Wh..." her father began, but a quick hit in the elbow from her mother put him on track again. "We'll still be pushing our view, of course, but we'll try to give you more room where we can and still be good parents."

Sam smiled faintly, "Thanks. Now, I need to get to Danny's." She was out the door before they even had the chance to try and make her put on the GIW Specter Shield. Minutes later, she was at Fenton Works and knocked. Jazz opened the door and she stormed inside, ignoring Jazz's confused remarks and Danielle sitting in the kitchen.

"Sam?" Danny asked as he saw her come in. "How'd you get away from your parents?"

"My grandmother cut in," Sam explained hurriedly as she strode towards him purposefully. "But that's not important right now. Danny, what happened? What happened on that hill, what's going on?" Jazz and Danielle were moving towards them cautiously, not that Sam noticed in her worry over Danny.

He looked down sadly, hands dropping down. "I... I killed them, Sam! I wasn't trying to, but you know the maxim about guns: Never pull the trigger unless you're taking the responsibility of what happened. I never wanted to hurt any of them..." his voice was trailing in pain and she held his hands tightly. "And I killed them. Twenty three men and women, all dead because of me! Twenty three families torn apart! Twenty three friendships ended! Twenty three more people sent to the Ghost Zone! Twenty three more tragedies for the march of history!"

"Danny, calm down!" Jazz cut in. "We went over this already, you gave them more chances to stop, and you were still in control no matter how much you were chewing yourself up!"

"I know, but _I. Still. Killed. Them_."

Sam freed her left hand and put it on his cheek. She wanted to tell him it was not his fault. She wanted to tell him that he had to act, but the words refused to come. All that she could do was be there for him while Jazz and Danielle gave the two room. The two sat quietly together on the couch in the living room, TV off as she knew that he did not need to be reminded constantly. And during this time, uncomfortable questions rose in Sam's mind. Danny had just killed. There was no way around it, because even amongst all the ghost portals, all the Fenton inventions and witty banter of ghost fighting, death was still very real.

And Sam wondered if she could forgive him. Somehow, deep in the back of her mind, even she felt like this was a line crossed. She looked at him, and while she knew better, she saw the flaming hair, blue skin, and white goatee of something far darker. She tried to shove the thought aside; if Danny was distraught over killing enemies who were trying to waste him, how could he be turning evil? After all, he was acting not only in self defense, but he was defending someone innocent. Surely, that outweighed the deaths that he would do anything short of killing another person to make up for, right?

Silence still dominated the house when a familiar RV rolled up in front of the house long after it was expected to show up.

XX

**End Chapter**

_- I'll admit, I bounced around a bit on how to explain Danny not killing everyone. I always intended there to be casualties as the Ghostly Wail is Danny's ultimate attack, and by the light of Oppenheimer it was introduced as a __city buster__ by taking out a dedicated city-wide anti-ghost defense network! The casualty number was initially seven, one for each deadly sin, but then I decided that even that was too low a casualty number. I rose the number but kept it under the 1/10th mark since I wanted it to be casualties enough to be scary, but low enough that it's pretty clear that it could have been far worse and Danny was still in considerable control._

_- As to how Danny did not unleash everything, I bounced between Danny subconsciously lowering the Wail's power, hence why I did not give narration for such in the last chapter, and explaining it as him suddenly learning to better control it, unknowingly, the same way that he had learned the ability. I even shared implications to the later to some reviewers who raised the point. In hindsight, that was me jumping the gun and I apologize, but the second form was too handwave based for me to take as I thought about it. So, I went for filing it under an out-of-universe explanation of me being selective with details, and an in-universe explanation that Danny was much more freaking out over the fact he was using the Ghostly Wail on humans at all. And, it was a nice way to show how ingrained Danny's resistance to the idea of turning into Dan was: he cannot even bring himself to use the Ghostly Wail in a lethal manner and was still in control. Now what if something happened that pushed him past that in a righteous fury?_

_- Sam's parents... well, let's be fair, in the show they are portrayed wholly as generic WASPs (even though they're Jewish, which still works if you ignore the 'Protestant' part of WASP). That said, it's a bad author who ignores that no matter how obstructionist they seem to us because we generally see things from the usual trio's view, that they still love their daughter and are trying to do well. Grandmother Manson... well, I admit I always saw her as the mediator in the family. She sympathized with Sam (or was just genre savvy) enough to let her go out on her own in 'Control Freaks', but I never got the implication she thought that Sam should run free without anything checking her._

_- If you've come for fighting action, I will be honest and tell you that you should not expect any more action like what you had in the last two chapters. There's no reason for it and to insert any just serves no purpose. I'm mostly saying this as a forewarning because the subject matter at hand and coming up means that it calls for some serious thought from the characters that just does not work with a fight scene and I'd like to cut off the 'more action please' reviews like I had for Ghost Club._

_- This fic is over the halfway point for certain, and I want to thank the reviewers (Writeous, MsFrizzle, chadtayor020, Sammi) for following and offering their commentary. It helps to get some feedback on what I'm doing, though the more constructive criticism you can offer the better as no writer is perfect and I'd like to improve._


	4. Chapter 4

_"The Ghostly Wail... it's that moment when you realize that it's all over. There's nothing you can do as you get hammered by a supersonic attack. But being smashed like a tidal wave isn't the worse part, no, the worst part is the moan that echoes as you're being hit. That moan just saps the life right out of you, all the vitality and energy you have. You just feel hopeless, and you _are_ when you hear it. All the pain, all sorts of horrible emotions, it just boils right up and takes over. Does wonders for morale..."_

- Private Alexander Jacobs, GIW Light Infantryman and survivor of the Skirmish of Amity Park, giving testimony to experiencing the Ghostly Wail

XXX

**Chapter 4**

**Elmerton Apartments**

Twenty three. Twenty three humans dead. _But can you really take part in destroying a human?_ Apparently, she just did. Twenty three of them, in fact. Valerie was lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling, surrounded by her messy array of information on various ghosts (including an old wanted poster for Danny mostly obscured by more recent bulletins), and a small weapon's footlocker where she locked up all her guns when not in use, though it was unlocked at the moment.

"Come on girl, he said himself he was trying to keep it from happening, and you didn't pull the trigger..." Valerie muttered to herself. Destroying ghosts was one thing for her; she was pretty sure that they reformed somewhere in the Ghost Zone anyways. After all, how did you kill something that was already dead? But seeing the Ghostly Wail, seeing Danny kill, had troubled her. Sure, all the medical officials not on the GIW paycheck were saying that the actual causes of death was stuff like a rag dolled tank tread landing on someone's neck, but she was no fool: Danny caused it.

And she had spotted for him, telling him when the GIW had funneled into the attack where the area of effect would be most devastating. Even if the courts ruled that it as self defense or some similar ruling in the inevitable hearing over the whole incident, she still helped kill each and every one of those twenty three soldiers.

_How did it escalate that far?_ She wondered as she thought back to how quietly it had started. A little scuffle outside of Amity Park and her stepping in for... did she dare say friend? The next thing she knew, it had turned into a full scale invasion and finally ended with the ghost equivalent of a nuclear bomb being fired, no matter how toned down it supposedly was. She looked towards the old wanted poster and wondered how much of this could have been avoided had she managed to take him down when the bounty was still good. Before she realized just how much she had been manipulated.

The door opened and she was quick on the uptake, reaching for the weapons footlocker and a pistol was in her hand when she saw it was her father coming in. Exhaling, she let the pistol slip back into its place in the footlocker, but the adrenaline did not fade. "Daddy?" she asked weakly, surprised at how uncertain she sounded.

"Valerie... we have to talk. What happened?" He was not angry, but he was worried. He had let her wait in her room a while, saying something about letting her think things over before talking to her. And somehow, she forgot about him planning on coming in from how disturbing her thoughts were.

"I saw the explosions north of town and went to check it out, make sure it wasn't a ghost attack and all." Valerie explained, hoping that saying it aloud might help put things in perspective. "You remember when I mentioned seeing other sides to ghosts? About two weeks before the whole Disasteroid?"

"Vaguely, yes. I'm guessing the ghost girl was the ghost in question?"

"Yeah. Vlad had hired me to get her, claiming she was trying to assassinate him or something to that effect." He had not used the word assassinate, but in essence that was what he was asking for defense against. "So, I found the girl and caught her, then she claimed to know Danny." Unbidden, Operative Oscar's statement of Danielle being a clone came to mind, but she pushed it down since Danielle briefly filled her in on the gaps before she went with Danny to the Fenton Works building. "So, I used her as bait to get to him and caught him, handed the girl to Vlad, and brought him to the sewers where I had set up a small work area. Once he came around, he started chewing me out about her being a half-ghost, and got me to help him free her before Vlad destroyed her."

"And said something to the effect of you can't take part in destroying a human?" her father said, sitting on the bed next to her and putting a comforting hand on her shoulder.

"Yeah." She blinked, putting herself back on topic before she started trying to figure out how he had guessed that. "Anyways, we freed her and I let Danny go since I figured that maybe ghosts weren't all bad, and when I went back to check in on 'Mayor Masters', I found out he was half ghost, not that I got a solid chance to do anything about it. Fast forward to a couple hours ago: I found Danielle speeding away from the GIW and called Danny, since this was his 'cousin'." She could not help but put bite into the term 'cousin', since she knew now that Danielle was very much _not_ his cousin.

"I take it there's more to this cousin than you've told me? Something to do with Vlad?" Her father's tone was still that same care, and there was no accusation behind it. _Damn it,_ Valerie thought angrily, _why isn't he angry? He should be since I just helped kill a bunch of people!_

"Yeah." She inhaled, wondering if it was her place to explain. "I'm not sure if it's my place to explain, it's sort of a matter between the two, but I'll leave it that Vlad was hair deep in it."

Whether that satisfied her father or not, he showed no hints and simply nodded along. "Alright, go on. What happened next?"

"Well, we had a bit of a running fight. Danny was trying to get us to disengage the whole time, he was planning on using the GCN to warp himself and Danielle out of there so the GIW would leave Amity Park, but they cut it off by using it as a staging area and we were attacked by advance teams that had moved deep into town, including tanks. After a little more fighting, we took it outside with Danny calling the GIW out to get things out of town so no one got hurt. I thought his plan was to just let loose with his full powered ice and plasma blasts at Graveyard Hill until the GIW were too battered to fight on and retreated, I didn't see the Ghostly Wail coming."

"So that's what it's called? That horrific shriek? I could hear it, faintly, in the lab." He seemed unnerved by the fact that he was able to hear it.

"Yeah." Valerie explained as a shiver shot up her spine as she remembered the horrific, _unnatural_ noise, "some sort of supersonic scream that he's really hesitant about using. He said he was toning it down or something, that if he used full power he would have... have..." _Why am I stuttering?!_ She just could not articulate it.

"Destroyed them all?"

Valerie blinked, surprised at the bluntness. Did he understand that twenty three people were dead? That this was not one of those Real Time Strategy games where it was just pixels going poof and a deadpan 'unit lost' comment from your mission control, this was _people dying_!

But he was right. She swallowed and nodded, and her father took that as an answer. "You stayed and helped save as many lives as you could."

"But I spotted for him! I told him exactly when the Guys in White were funneling into the attack!" she screamed, surprised at her own intensity as she shot to her feet, knocking past her father's hand. "I sat there and aimed that ghostly nuclear launch! _I helped kill those people!_"

He rose after her and put both of his hands on her shoulders, looking her square in the eye calmly. "That's the reality of combat, Valerie. People die. Each one of those soldiers knew the risk when they signed up. I knew what I signed up for when I signed up as security, and you being a ghost hunter. I knew you were too young to understand just how stark the reality was, no matter how confident you thought you were. No one, not even the most elite soldier of the military, is ever fully prepared for seeing the full reality when they first see it." He gently lowered her back onto her bed as he continued speaking, the two returning to where they had sat down. "What they have is the training to prepare them for the eventuality. You don't have that, even if you felt you were willing to throw yourself into the fire to protect people."

"What're you saying?" Valerie asked, confused and still trying to understand his point.

"That you have to think on the reality as it is. Death never was some distant theory to wonder about in idle hours, it's a constant reality. You've grown so much, and I'm proud of you. Proud of you for taking a stand and sticking to your beliefs, even if what you did was foolish. Brave, noble, but foolish."

She blushed and hunched her shoulders in an attempt to hide it. Why he was so good at this, she would never know. "So, you want me to think about what I did?"

"Yes." He glanced towards the weapon footlocker and some of the prototype pieces of a new combat suit that she had been fiddling with, his mouth twitching like he was trying to think of how to put something. "I'm grounding you, you need the time to think about this and what you did should by all rights land you in all sorts of trouble. But I'm proud of you for taking a stand."

"Thanks... I think." The grounding did not bother her, as she realized that maybe she _did_ need a break from all the ghost hunting. She certainly needed to sort things out.

"Oh, and Axion called. They aren't canceling your contract even though the GIW isn't happy to see Axion weapons used against them. I do, however, need the combat data from your suit and weapons. They're very curious to see how ecto-weapons match up when used on humans, and..."

"... and not a lot of people are willing to be shot by futuristic guns to see how they work." Valerie finished, completing the bleak humor as she slid across her bed, crouching in front of the footlocker and putting her hands on the sides before hefting it up and putting it on her bed. She was pretty sure she heard a large vehicle screech to a halt outside. "Take what you need from there, I'll upload my tech armor's stuff to the flash drive."

Somehow, putting her mind to a task was helping her. No need to think about the tough questions while working as the black gauntlets formed around her hands and she connected the left one to her computer. She always had the hindsight moment of wondering how intelligent it was to plug armor created by a tech ghost into her computer, but as far as she knew the armor was wholly her own. A knock on the door distracted her and she followed her father in answering, heart pounding as she wondered if it was a GIW assault squad with a warrant...

Her father held a hand up to her and raised a single finger, and she nodded quietly. He looked through the peep hole in the door and opened it without glancing back. To Valerie's surprise, it was the Fentons, who seemed wholly unconcerned, though Mister Fenton was covered in black grease.

"Hey there, Damon, sorry to drop in like this." Jack Fenton said bashfully as his infamous, Massachusetts hailing driving spoke yet again. "We uh... blew a tire right outside the apartment building."

_That explains the screech I heard,_ Valerie thought as the other Fenton explained. "We have the tire, but we were hoping you had a spare jack to help us lift it up."

"No pun intended," the large ghost hunter added, getting a brief smirk from her father.

"Sure thing, Jack." He glanced back, "Valerie, could you go get the jack? It should be in the main closet." The look on his face told her that he was going to fill them in. _Well, better they hear it from a friend instead of a GIW sympathizer,_ Valerie decided as she went back and looked for it.

As she fished around, she could hear shocked reactions from the two Fentons. She was sure the shrill cry of 'what' was Jack. There were some loud reactions, but when she returned minutes later with the device, they were talking quietly.

"So. The Guys in White came to town and attacked one of Danny's friends from the other side, who the GIW were hunting for an unknown reason but not because of wrongdoing?" Jack asked, "Just to be sure."

"Yes, Jack, that's what he said." Maddie added, "But... our boy killed those people?"

"I'm not familiar with the details, but the official stance from the coroners is that it was indirect. Apparently, the power your son used was being watered down significantly, but he would know the details." Her father shrugged. "That's what I know, and I wish I could tell you more. But, you deserved to find out from someone else other than some reporter on a commentary run."

"Thank you." Jack said as he saw her. "Ah, thank you. It shouldn't take too long."

"You're welcome." Valerie said as she passed the heavy device to him. She glanced to her father and he nodded slowly as she noted the clock read nine.

XX

**Fenton Works, Amity Park**

**9:03 PM**

"Is... is he going to be alright?" Danielle finally asked quietly, looking at Danny from the kitchen.

"He should be," Jazz answered just as softly, "he just needs time. He's... pretty serious about this kind of thing."

"And he wasn't so freaked when he wasted those other clones?" Danielle retorted quietly as the memories replayed in her head, still confusing her. "There's no dancing around it, he killed them. I killed two of them with him, and one was probably just as aware as I am. What makes this any different?"

Jazz seemed stunned by the question, though whether it was the level of maturity that Danielle was showing or the unfortunate implications of the question was beyond her. She knew that Danny was just defending himself and the first two times, he had no idea what he was fighting and was confused when the clones melted. But it had provoked a response from the older woman. _I guess no one's getting out of this happy,_ Danielle realized. _Now why is Danny freaking out still? It was self defense, and he knows it. That should be the end of the story._

"I guess it's the context." Jazz finally answered quietly. "He's had some bad experiences with an evil him running around, and he's very serious about avoiding that happening." She wondered if that was the 'him' they were referring to since Vlad would not make any sense nor elicit that level of fear.

"That, and not knowing they were clones until later?"

"That might have helped. Or having other things to worry about instead of having nothing to do once it was gone. Give him time, he'll swing around when he's needed, but until then he's going to be dealing with the cognitive dissonance of what happened and will be wrestling with how to justify it in a way that satisfies his sense of morality."

_She sure seems knowledgeable about this,_ Danielle mused, wondering if Jazz was looking into... _what was it? Spycology? No, that's not it..._ She wondered if she should have watched more of those educational videos that Vlad had provided to help bring her up to speed in the knowledge department. She had some intrinsically thanks to flash training applied before she became aware, but she was still reliant more on street smarts than book knowledge.

It was about half an hour after nine when the door opened again. Jazz stood up and walked over, leaving Danielle in the kitchen. She stayed where she was, unsure of how to present herself to the two who had brought her own DNA into the world. Fortunately, she was unnoticed as Danny brought his parents up to speed with what had happened, since they were focused on the fight on Graveyard Hill, not the events as a whole. This let her remain hidden in the chair behind the table.

XX

Danny perked up as his parents came in, and almost shifted forms thinking it was a GIW black ops (white ops?) squad making a retaliatory strike before he saw his parents. "Mom, dad?"

"Danny..." his mother said distantly, looking at him. Sam edged away from him, but kept her hand on his as his parents moved closer.

"I'm... sorry." Danny said slowly. "I know. I shouldn't have..."

"Danny, listen," his father said as he locked the door. "We know what happened. Damon told us when we had to stop to replace a tire. We know you were doing everything you could to not do it."

"But I still killed them!" Danny shouted. "It's not alright! I didn't control it enough!" A hand touched his shoulder and he turned to see Jazz standing there.

"Danny," she said quietly, "Listen. No, it's not alright, but we went through this already. You did everything you could. You're _worrying_ about it!"

"She's right, you know." Sam added. "You're worry is what's telling us that you aren't jumping off any slopes." She left the comparison to Dan unsaid; he never told his parents about the whole time travel mess, and he never intended to unless it became necessary. Besides, Dan was locked in Clockwork's Lair anyways.

"Listen Danny," his mother said as she and his father stood in front of him. "These questions can wait. You're tired, and you're in no shape to make any decisions with your state. You need to rest, you need to get some sleep."

"But..." Danny tried to protest, not wanting this to be dismissed out of hand.

"No buts, Daniel," his father cut in. "Your mother's right, it's too late to be solving anything right now. But I have to ask, who was this specter friend of yours? Whatever she did must have annoyed the Guys in White good."

Danny left his father's fan boy attitude over the GIW unsaid. "She didn't do anything... actually, maybe we should let her answer your questions herself..."

XX

Jack frowned as he looked at Danny. He was torn over how to react; his own son, a killer? But on the other hand, how could the Guys in White go so out of control that they were just short of occupying Amity Park just for one ghost? These were the _professionals_, for fudge's sake! But, the fact that the ghost was in their own house put his nerves on edge in the moment.

"Danielle?" Danny asked, turning towards the kitchen and everyone looked in that direction. Jack's jaw dropped as he saw the little girl come out from where she had been hiding at the kitchen table; she could only be what, twelve years old tops? But, he could not shake a foreboding feeling. Like she looked familiar. The eyes were very familiar, as was the hair color, and the facial composition even with the quiet, almost cowering face she was wearing as she looked like she was trying to be as small as possible. He ruled out one explanation, she was far too old and Danny was far too young for it to be _that_.

"Jack..." Maddie said in shock, "She looks..."

"There's something else you need to know," she finally said when white rings _exactly_ like those that appeared around Danny when he transformed passed over her. As they passed by her, the cute human girl was replaced with a ghostly girl with the same proportions and size...

And the DP logo on her chest suddenly made everything clear. "She's... she's... she's _you?!_" Jack shouted, stumbling a step backwards as he tried to make sense of it. "But _how?!_"

"I'm a clone," Danielle explained quietly, tugging at Jack's heartstrings as she shifted back to her human form. "Vlad Masters made me in one of his schemes. It's... it's a long story, you might want to sit down."

Jack did so, dropping himself down into the armchair. Maddie was sitting on the couch cousin nearest to him, with Sam and Jazz sitting a little further away. Danny and his clone were standing in between them all.

"How does this work? How did this scientific impossibility _happen_?!" Maddie asked, and Jack had heard that voice before: sheer disbelief at something completely impossible and something completely _wrong_.

"We don't know," Danny supplied. "All I know is that whatever research Vlad had left, it's gone now."

"Or in GIW hands," Danielle offered, "That's probably how they found out about me."

"True." Danny said, and Jack realized that his son was seizing this objective, whatever it was, to distract him from the troubling thoughts of the recent battle. "So, Vlad was trying to clone me. I told you his old set of goals; kill you, dad; marry you, mom; and adopt me as his son, right?" Jack frowned as he considered where his son was going with this, but Jazz probably already knew given she was looking at them more than her... dare he say little sister? Philosophical questions like this were always beyond him, unreachable to him as ghost related technology was to most others. "Well, by this point I had pretty much convinced him I wasn't going to shift."

"So he started a project in Colorado," Danielle took up, growing in confidence like she had explained this before. "A long story short, while I still thought Vlad was a good man, I was in a scheme to capture Danny and get a DNA sample of him mid-morph, but when Vlad showed he just thought I was expendable and fodder for his schemes, I helped Danny break out."

"That _two faced ghost fucking son of a bitch!"_ Jack roared as it finally clicked in his head, leaping onto his feet with a speed most fat men envied. "That no good, ghast bitten goblin leper kissing, red eyed, Vampire sucking, zombie brained, mummy wrapping, hellborn demon bastard of _lies!_" No one even stopped his paranormal themed litany of curses when he finally reached the climax, _"I TRUSTED THAT MAN! AND HE TURNED AROUND AND ABUSED YOUR DNA, DANNY! HE VIOLATED YOU! HE..."_ Suddenly tired from the display, he collapsed backwards onto the armchair. "He... he..."

"He acted in a way no friend should have ever thought of," Maddie said, her fury far more tranquil than that Jack had unleashed. "He should count himself lucky that he was in the path of the Disasteroid, because no matter what history, no matter what kind of person he was, he would _die_ for that. And die again and again until he ceased to exist."

Danielle slipped behind Danny and Jack's heart plummeted. _Oh no... I... no..._ He looked at her. "I... I'm sorry, Danielle, I..." He was lost for words. How did he apologize to a clone when he just treated her like she was a violation of her own (Danny's; he had no idea) blood? She must have heard about his 'molecule-by-molecule' rants, that kind of terror. He always wanted his name, his presence, to strike that fear into ghosts. Now... he regretted it. This one time.

XX

In the silence, Danielle stared at the man who had provided half of the original DNA that she was made from, his towering rage towards Vlad, her so-called 'father' and person behind her creation, and feared that she would end up victim of his rage towards whatever familial violation he felt she had broken. Whatever territorial honor she violated by existing, or whatever biologically born called it. Could she really look towards him as a possible friend when such a clear divide was between them? Almost instinctively, she hid herself behind Danny, wondering if she should just turn invisible and leave before she caused any more harm.

The fury from Danny's mother was, in many ways, more terrifying. She was not raging blindly, spewing forth an impressive vocabulary of curses to describe how foul a person could be, but she was in full control. Like a tactician planning how best to defend her kin and friends from attack or plan revenge. Jack would destroy her in pure anger, but Maddie's revenge would be precise, calculated, and merciless.

But... the rage and vitriol was not directed at _her_, that was clear as she thought about it. They were angry at Vlad, but were they also unsure. The confused, stuttered apology meant that Jack was not pure rage, that he might have... dare she say sympathized with her? Finally, she broke the silence.

"It's... it's alright. I'd probably be angry too."

"No," Jack said, catching Danielle unaware with how sincere he sounded, "I shouldn't have stormed like that. It's not your fault that you were created, born, I don't know what the right word is."

"Still... there's a very important question." Maddie cut in slowly. "What do we do now?"

Danielle knew this was coming, and had an answer. "Well, I came here mainly to talk to Danny. I can't really do more on my own, and I need to know how to use my powers beyond what I already know."

"But?" Jazz asked calmly, no accusation in her voice. "That doesn't really explain everything. Where would you stay?"

"Vlad had a bunch of safe houses," Danielle answered, "The Guys in White have no idea about them, otherwise they'd of stormed into them when I showed up. There's one in Amity Park, fully stocked with survival supplies and unconnected to any of Vlad's other old assets. I could stay there, or head into the Ghost Zone and set up a lair; I'll probably need one someday anyways so why not get one now?"

"I told you Danielle," Danny cut in, "I'm not going to let anyone force you to stay in the Ghost Zone."

"Danny, please," she shot back, appreciating the concern, "This isn't being forced in anymore. This is me choosing."

"Danielle, the Ghost Zone isn't some peaceful river or fluffy clouds, it's very dangerous and many of the inhabitants there have me on their bingo book, and you're close enough for most of them." Danny retorted, looking at her with concern. "Yeah, I have allies there, but how would you get food? Ghost Zone chow is about as dangerous as ignited Nasty Burger sauce if someone eats it. Besides, where would you get a lair in the Ghost Zone?"

"Danny," Sam cut in, "She's half-ghost, I'm pretty sure we can figure something out. We have a lot of sources of information. This isn't going to be jumping in blind."

"I can't believe it, you want her in there?" Danny asked, staring disbelievingly at her.

"You're fine with Frostbite, Wulf, Dora..." Jazz pointed out.

"Yeah, but... they're..."

"Ghosts? Yeah, but so am I." Danielle pointed out. "We're halfas, we're both of worlds."

"She could stay with us." Jack cut in finally, stunning Danielle. He... he wanted her to _stay_, under his roof?

XX

"Jack?" Maddie asked, shocked at how easily forgiving her husband was. No, Danielle was not at fault for Vlad's sins, but at the same time how could they take responsibility of her? She blinked as she figured out how to put it nicely. "Jack, are you sure? Is there really anything we can do?"

"Sure there is." Jack pointed out. "Besides, you know how Vlad got his powers. It was my fault, being careless with the proto-portal all those years ago. Everything he did is my fault as well because it sprung from that. I owe it to her at least to try and do something to make up for my own failures."

She smiled sadly, there was the man she loved: they shared quite a bit of arrogance and hubris that came with their work, but under it all was loyalty and a genuine desire to do something good, and both for science and for the safety of the world from the paranormal. And there he was, trying to make up for a mistake he knew nothing about for decades.

"How would it work, though?" she finally asked. "You're right, we could help Danielle a lot, but how would it work? I don't think there's even the needed government protocols for adopting someone with Danielle's..." she glanced to the little girl, still wishing she could shake the fact that her eyes were exactly like her little boy's, and got a shrug in return. "Well, for adopting a clone." Jack looked at Danielle, trying to figure out if she was perturbed with the language.

"Look, let's be honest, I am a clone, there's no dancing around it," Danielle explained with a hint of exasperation at everyone's sensitivity in dodging the issue.

"So, cousins doesn't work anymore, huh?" Danny asked.

"No, probably not." Danielle answered. "So... how would this work?"

XX

Jazz watched, amazed that her parents had finally overcome their hatred for ghosts and were able to forgive. That they were willing to shoulder another burden on the house. _Of course, with their parenting style..._

She finally cut in. "Look, adopting isn't going to be on the table until the current quagmire's been finished. But," she stood and walked towards Danielle and hugged her, catching the little girl by surprise. "Even if you aren't, welcome to the family, Danielle."

Slowly, but surely, their parents came in and joined. Danny smirked towards Sam, "Come on, Sam. You can join it."

The amusement in the goth girl's voice was palpable as she joined, "Little soon, isn't it?" The joke took a moment to resonate, but soon everyone was laughing, and it seemed like the drama and angst of the day was over.

But, Jazz could feel something wet on her shirt and realized that under it all, Danielle was crying. Happy tears, she hoped, but tears none the less and Jazz's mind slowly looked towards the future. A glance to her brother confirmed that the two had similar worries, but they left them unsaid for the moment.

XXX

XXX

XXX

XXX

_"Why..."_ _"Murderer..." "Killer..." "Butcher..." "Damned..." "Slayer..." "Villain..."_

He raised his hands into an on guard position, trying to find the voices in the thick green mist that he was certain was that of the Ghost Zone.

"Who... who are you?" Danny asked in his ghost form as he looked around. The voices echoed back, an unholy mix of male and female voices of different temperaments, but all that would be recognizable as American.

_"Victims..." "Slain..." "Betrayed..." "Slaughtered..." "Massacred..."_

He saw a pair of red eyes in the mist and froze, his form colder than his ice core could ever generate on its own. "No, no, no, NO!" he screamed, "No, this can't be happening..."

_"Betrayer..." "Falling..." "Killer..." "Murderer..."_

The voices would not cease throwing epithets towards him, and in the shadows of the mist he saw figures. Young men and women, happy, vibrant, alive...

_"Butcher..." "Executioner..." "War Criminal..." "Why... why us?..."_

"Who... who are you?" Danny asked, white armor forming around the young men and women and all their untold stories. "No... no... no... I... I never..."

Suddenly, a ear splitting moan cut through everything and Danny realized _he_ was doing it! No matter how much he tried to stop it, his Ghostly Wail shot into the mist and into the figures, shattering the armor, melting away the skin and flesh of the figures and vaporizing their core mass as they continued hurling epithets towards him even as they fell into puddles of liquid flesh. The wail stopped and all he could see were pale, lifeless bodies of those same figures, lying in the gore of their own wasted bodies, staring with dead, glazed over eyes into the sky.

_"Slayer..." "Killer..." "Betrayer..." "Murderer..." "Betrayer..."_

"I... I never wanted this," he said as he finally saw that the number of figures was twenty three. Then more bodies appeared as the mist cleared... countless random people that he wished he could put a name and face to. Paulina lay gutted... was she wearing an orange jumpsuit and equipped with ecto weapons? Ricky Marsh, shredded and keeled over as if key organs had been phased out of his body. There was a vaporized puddle of human biomass he somehow knew was Dash. Kwan, older and in a white lab coat and mangled like he was in a car crash. He saw a puddle of green goo, and saw Danielle's face screaming towards him as he looked. Then he saw fire... and in the flames, he saw them. Sam, Tucker, Jazz in the Fenton Peeler armor, his parents... all helpless and looking at him desperately. As was Lancer.

_"I suppose out of respect for our past I should let you live..."_ Danny was drawn towards the source of the voice and realized _it was his voice_, but far more deeper and baritone than it should have been. He was holding something in his hand and looked at it... no, it couldn't be his hand: it was a _black_ gauntlet, not a white glove! And in it was...

Valerie. Held by her futuristic bandoleer.

_"But that's not how I work,_" he said and threw her away like a discarded rag doll.

He wanted to scream her name, to shoot after her and try to save her, but the mist exploded, blinding him until he appeared in a devastated landscape and finally back in his own body.

"Where..." he looked around the blasted area, decayed clean of all life. The rubble remains of buildings of humanity lay about him as he realized where he was. _His_ future. _His_ work. _His_ actions...

Then he saw the gravestone, the image that haunted him to the day, the sight that had finally told him how critical his responsibilities were...

_"Betrayer!" "Killer!" "Murderer!" "Butcher!" "Traitor!"_

Suddenly, he was surrounded. Ghosts, all in the shapes of those he had seen dead. Everyone he had ever known in his human life, from his parents to Valerie to her father (missing an arm) to Lancer to Jazz to Tucker to... Sam.

_"Massacre!" "Wrath!" "Slaughter!" "Vengeance!" "Justice!" "Revenge!"_

"Sam I..." he stuttered as the ghosts grabbed him and began clawing at him. Ripping him apart molecule by molecule. He screamed, long and loud and incoherently, launching upwards...

He blinked, no longer was he in the devastation of his own actions in that dark future. No longer was he the victim of all those he had killed in that time taking their vengeance. He was in his own bedroom, in human form wearing night clothes, in the dark of night...

And standing in front of him was a starry sky, and a certain white mask with purple horns.

"Nocturne!" he snarled, quickly shifting to Phantom formand powering up beams of ice around his hands. "Just like you to walk in on someone's nightmares, huh? I already have enough to deal with without you joining in."

"Calm yourself, Danny Phantom." Nocturne stated as he held a hand up. "I am not here to scheme. I am here to observe."

"Observe what?" He asked hotly, hands still glowing blue as his core continued pumping out cold energy to unleash at a moment's notice. "If I find any of those high tech tiaras..."

"You shall not, for your dreams is all that concerns me." The ghost of sleep turned towards the clock which read 1:07 AM. "You see, young Phantom, your dreams speak to your inner self. They are a gateway to your subconscious."

"So?" Danny asked, having heard this Freudian spiel from Jazz. _Why she even has a poster of that dude in her room..._ he shoved that thought aside. "How is this your business?"

"I am only here to give you knowledge of dreams. They are a gateway to your subconscious. What does it tell you of yourself?"

He stared at the ghost, but he started mulling over what he was discussing. If he wanted to form Sleepwalkers to attack him, all he had to do was order them to and Amity Park would again be alight with ghostly combat. He thought back to the dream, how vivid it was, the epithets being thrown towards him... what did they mean?

"Why are you telling me this?" he finally asked. Nocturne had some angle here, he would not be there out of the goodness of his proverbial heart.

"As you awoke to my presence, and engaged in this dialogue. Or would you rather we do battle, for if you wish conflict, my Sleepwalkers are more than prepared to oblige any bloodlust you still possess."

"No," Danny answered tiredly, "There's been enough violence today. And I won't start any more unless you try something funny, alright?"

Nocturne smiled. "Very well, young Phantom. Now, I must return to the Ghost Zone to ponder what I have learned. Goodbye, and sleep well." To Danny's surprise, Nocturne lowered his head in... was that a gesture of respect? Danny never knew with this guy, he only fought him once and never got a lot besides his shtick being dreams and that he dreamed big. Nocturne faded, and Danny invisibly followed him down until he was sure he entered the Ghost Zone, then returned to his room and shifted back to his human form, wondering just what Nocturne was doing there. He looked at the clock, and tucked himself back into bed. He was in no shape to deal with it, and he drifted back to sleep and dream.

_"Hahaha! You are such a child. You 'promised'?"_

_"Yes... I... PROMISED!"_

_"I guess... the future... isn't as set in stone as you think it is."_

_"Clockwork? You saved them?! I... I don't understand..."_

_"And here we are with you, a fourteen year old child, risking everything to save the people you care about."_

XXXX

**End Chapter**

_- One thing that always bugged me about the fact that we have the Christmas episode after TUE is that we never really see Danny dealing with knowing all that. I mean, someone could argue that Danny's start of darkness present since 'Splitting Images' coming to a screeching halt was one of the most significant effects, but I still think a lot of good material that did not even need to be too dark was lost because of how the episodes went. That said, it should not have been a looming shadow over everything; I mean, there's a certain cheerfulness that the show had that gave it its taste. Even TUE, dark as it was, kept comedy coming with Box Lunch, Danny pausing to comment to Lancer about his now-explained periodic absences, Tucker wondering how them dying because Danny cheated on a test was fair. Mind, the whiplash back to serious was pretty fast, but it still kept the offbeat moments of comedy coming._

_- I think I had way too much fun with Jack's litany of paranormal themed curses... Now I'm __very__ glad I rated this T, because that is definitely beyond K+ even if some people get the occasional curse in there. That said, I always felt like there was more under Jack Fenton then we see; I mean, we know he can be extremely dangerous when pushed, but there's bound to be more to him than pure arrogance. And he seemed genuinely horrified in 'Phantom Planet' when he realized that he had caused Vlad to become half-ghost _and_ was seriously worried over the ecto-acne in 'Master of All Time'._

_- Yes, Jazz _does_ have a poster of Freud in her room. It's really hard to see, but in 'The Fright Before Christmas', during the montage of the Ghost Writer mutating the toys of Amity Park, if you pause when she opens the door to her room you can see it on the right side. Kind of surprised, as his very bleak view of humanity from doing most of his studies on criminals, but hey, who knows?_

_- For those who did not know, according to Butch Hartman (if I recall correctly of the source, please correct me if I am wrong), had the series gone on further, Danielle would have eventually been adopted into the Fenton family and become a little sister to Danny and Jazz. Given the abrupt ending to the series, we got D-Stabilized to tidy up the story pretty well. That said, I can't grasp it as one of those overnight things; I mean, it's a big step and there's a lot of things that, in my view, need to be done first. Just the culture shock of Danielle being a clone of their own son would take time for the Fentons to figure out._

_- Finally; thank you to Deborahpflover, Writerous, chadtaylor020, Sammi, and Amaris the Demon for their reviews. I appreciate it guys, and the feedback helps me know if I'm getting things right or if I need to look at what I'm doing._


	5. Chapter 5

_"In the aftermath of what is now known as the Skirmish of Amity Park, support for the GIW organization has soared, with a number of senators and representatives coming to defend their actions in defense of our country and condemnation of Danny Phantom for his actions in direct contempt of lawful action."_

- Channel 6 News Report on the day following the Skirmish of Amity Park

**Chapter 5**

**0900 Hours, The Next Day**

**GIW Headquarters; Location Classified**

Director Vance looked at the two operatives and their failed mission. Yes they had failed to accomplish their primary objective, yes their opponents had more political ammunition, and yes they had just been humiliated in front of the world. Yes they had lost twenty three soldiers, yes a dozen White Bengal Tiger tanks had been destroyed beyond the point of being salvageable, and yes two White Eagle Strike Jets had been lost with the two pilots amongst the twenty three casualties.

But, what they had gained might have outweighed the entire mission failure. Not only had they gained support from the public thanks to the normal American psyche freaking out to deaths, along with blaming the person who caused them even in the face of facts, and some public relations operatives cleverly insinuating that Danny Phantom held himself above human law. They were gaining new sources of support that they previously never had, and that was opening new opportunities for them. All of this from one small scale battle.

"All in all," Director Vance finally said to Operatives Oscar and Kilo, "mission failed, but the failure has given us quite a bit of ground to work on. I'm not expecting the courts to rule in our favor as to going after the clone, images of us attacking it has proven to be something that made the public sympathetic to its cause, but our losses have lead to new support."

"Yes sir." Oscar said with a slow nod. "What are our next orders?"

"Take some R&R, and make sure you two are there at the services for the KIAs. Ensure that Danny Phantom does not enter it to try and make nice with a sob story; most of the families of the casualties will be against such anyways, but some might be touched in politically dangerous ways if they see whatever convincingly false sincerity he offers. After that, I want you two standing by at Firebase Ivory November to protect White Wraith and act to support it in any required functions. Dismissed."

As the two left, Vance sat back in his office and sighed. The president had called earlier, reminding him of the executive order to _not_ go after Phantom and extending it to the clone. On the other hand, he was intrigued by White Wraith, and unknowing of the full expected cost in lives, had given the GIW permission to continue their research. If nothing else, knowing more about how half-ghosts worked would better prepare them if another nation managed to gain ghost operatives and the intent to use them against the United States. _And that's all I need_, Vance had decided. They all knew that a new arms race had begun with public knowledge of the Ghostly Wail, and the CIA was already busy stepping up infiltration of the ghost focused organizations of other nations that were now forming to fill a void.

Indeed, the Guys in White were suddenly much more important in the US' defense, whether the rest of the military liked it or not.

XX

"Still think White Wraith isn't worth it?" Oscar asked his partner as they were packing their kit for leave. "After seeing what ghosts can do to our current level of technology?"

Kilo sighed as he considered. He still had his reservations, and the casualties taken for it still reeked of wasted lives. And he knew that just the nature of the research would claim even more. But could they really avoid the utter necessity of being able to fight on equal grounds to ghosts of that caliber? If even a _half_ ghost could do that much damage, how much devastation would full ghosts cause?

"I still hold my reservations," he answered slowly, "but after today, I fear that the cost may very well be the small sacrifice to prevent greater tragedies. We will not be the only ones looking into such a program, and we have to be ahead of the curve not just for our essentially private war with ghosts, but now for the security of our nation from other powers. If our enemies gain access to ghost type technology that lets them create more Phantoms..." The thought did not sit well with him. Sure, the Guys in White had a somewhat poor track record, but certainly they were better prepared for fighting ghosts or those with those powers than anything the rest of the military had. The different branches disliked each other, but they all felt the GIW was too out of the way to be the level they were and made their distaste known. If the regular army was forced to fight enemies with ghost capabilities regularly...

Oscar simply nodded. "If they gained the ability to create ghosts and our technology cannot match it or deploy operatives of our own who can face them down, we will fall significantly behind. We both know this is not an acceptable outcome."

"Agreed, but we cannot ignore that we may very much be acting like our enemies with what we do. So much of White Wraith is based on what we took from Vlad Plasmius' files that we are using exactly that which we are against to... _create_ it." Kilo shook his head as he laid his hands down on his pack. "Look, the suits were one thing for me; we were just creating a technological equivalent. But here, we will be essentially creating ghosts like that damned ghost brat."

That seemed to perturb Oscar, the idea that they were creating their enemies, and they were quiet the rest of the time they spent packing up.

XXX

**Fenton Works, Amity Park**

Danielle blinked as she opened her eyes to unfamiliar surroundings. It was not the familiar, carbon-copy gray safe house ceiling she was used to seeing when she woke up, but white plaster. She shot awake and transformed, white rings appearing and fading quickly as she hovered just over the bed and turned invisible, looking around before she recognized where she was. Fenton Works, guest bedroom. She had come over to find Danny, and had been taken in. Exhaling and returning to her human form, she dropped back onto the bed tiredly. Yesterday felt far longer than it should have been, like it had taken ages to pass. She blinked as memories came back of the battle, the devastation, but shrugged it off. It was done with, it was past, and she had to move on.

"Morning," someone said and her defensive reflexes immediately activated as she looked to the source of the voice: Jazz, Danny's sister. _Or is she my sister too?_ Danielle wondered as she again understood how much of a cultural enigma she would be. Questions of how she would work surfaced; would she have to start school based on her chronological age or would they go by her biological age? How would she build relationships with others from suddenly existing? Would she even be recognized as human because of her clone origin? She shook the thoughts away and smiled weakly.

"Morning," she answered back. "How long did I sleep?"

"It's about eight thirty in the morning, and breakfast is ready." Jazz explained. "Come on down when you're ready."

"Wait, shouldn't you be at school?" Danielle asked with a frown. "I thought you had to go really early in the morning for that."

"It's Saturday," Jazz pointed out, "No school."

"Oh," Danielle answered quietly as she realized that in her adventures, she had rarely tracked what day of the week it was. It was so rarely important that she never registered it, yet here she was, coming to a place where it would become important to learn. She knew each day, that had been flash trained into her by Vlad, but keeping track was her prerogative.

"You alright?" She asked, surprising Danielle at how seriously Jazz was treating her like a sibling. The stark juxtaposition between aiming a gun at her head and treating her like a little sister still rang in her mind.

"Yeah," Danielle answered automatically. "I'll be down in a few minutes."

Jazz left, shutting the door behind her and left Danielle to her thoughts as she slid out of bed. She always travelled light, but for some reason she felt like she had forgotten something that she was carrying.

"Duh," she muttered as she changed into the old clothes that had been left, "the backpack that got shot off." The clothes were simple; a black top and blue jeans and from the looks had belonged to Jazz a couple years ago before she grew too large for them. Glancing at the small mirror and shrugging at how she looked, Danielle headed downstairs.

"Look, Danny, we just want to do the same preliminaries we did with you..." someone said in the kitchen. After a moment, Danielle realized that it was Jack Fenton and paused, waiting just out of sight on the stairs.

"I know, but all the same I want to be there if you guys do anything." Danny answered back. "She's been through enough operating tables as is."

_No kidding,_ Danielle thought bluntly as she considered the tables she had already been on. After Vlad, no examination table would impress her. A shiver shot up her spine as the memories came rushing back, the pain of being melted down like plastic for a kiln.

"So she has." Maddie said, "Still, there's a lot of things to consider. Obviously, we have to wait until the whole hearing over yesterday, but what would we have to do?"

"Adopt her?" Jack said. "Come on, someone has to take her in. And... well, if she has the same DNA as Danny, doesn't that make her our daughter? Our responsibility?"

"Dad..." Danny cut in with what sounded to her like stunned surprise, "You're starting to sound like me..."

"Now you know how it feels, huh?" Jazz answered with enough smug teasing that Danielle was able to guess the grin on her face.

"Well, it's not like I was playing adult for a guy two years younger than me, right?" Danny shot back, lovingly sarcastic. Everyone laughed, but Danielle seriously considered that remark. What if the courts decided to rule that the parent of the clone was the DNA origin? After all, as far as they knew scientifically, clones the same number of years to grow up as the origin species. How Vlad had accelerated the growth to let her be as she was, she had no idea and had never bothered asking. As the laughter subsided, Danielle made her way down and entered the kitchen.

Danny turned and smiled at her, "Morning, Danielle."

"Morning," she answered back as she took a seat and helped herself to some of the pancakes - did the toast on the side look like Jack Fenton? - and glanced around. It was quiet for a few moments before Jazz broke the silence.

"So, Danny, you and Sam still meeting tonight?"

"Not as a date, no," Danny answered sadly. "We're... both kind of freaked from what happened and want to sort that out first."

Danielle froze, mouth open as she was about to take a bite from her fork and her hand turned intangible, the fork dropping. "I... what?" she asked in shock.

"Not a huge deal," Danny added quickly, glancing worriedly towards her, "but there's some things we need to iron out first. Don't worry about it, we've had issues before and solved them."

"You sure?" She asked uncertainly, a feeling of guilt welling up in her and wondered just how much she had done.

"Yeah." He glanced towards his parents. "Anyways, there's a few things we probably should do as soon as breakfast is over."

"Like what?" Danielle asked between bites, surprised at how hungry she was when she finally realized that she had not eaten dinner.

"Some DNA checks," Jack explained between huge intakes of pancakes. "We've been working to get the house's defense systems to recognize Danny's ectoplasmic signature so he can go ghost when everything is active. We managed to get it to work with him, but it never hurts to be sure it won't also get you."

"Thanks... I think." Danielle answered uncertainly. "So... other than that, what's going on today?"

"Not a lot." Jazz answered, "I have some studies to do, a few more early action applications to put in, but not a lot."

"We could always blather on about ghosts!" Jack chimed in. "Always happy to do so, and then there's the Jack-o-Lanterns I'm working on."

A collective sigh came from the other Fentons, like this was standard occurrence for him. Danny leaned towards her, holding a hand up to cover his mouth from his father; "You'll get used to it."

"Always into his gadgets?"

"Yup."

"And names them after himself?"

"You have no idea."

"So Danielle," Jazz asked conversationally. "Any thoughts on what you wanted to learn first?"

"Huh?" Danielle frowned before she made the connection. "Oh, right. Well..." she looked at Danny, "I don't know. I was sort of looking at those ice powers, especially with the utility you can get out of them."

Danny raised an eyebrow. "Utility? Unless you're making something out of ice or freezing the leftovers while the power's out, I don't think it really has a lot of non-combat stuff."

"Really?" She asked in surprise. "Come on, you're into comics. You've probably found dozens of mundane ways to use your powers."

"Well, flying is a great way to avoid the school bus crowd and there was that one time I was vacuuming the walls..."

"What?" Maddie asked with a raised eyebrow. "I mean, it was nice to see them clean, but vacuuming the walls?"

"Lemme guess, flying?" Jack asked before stuffing his mouth full of pancakes. _Jeez, how much does this guy eat in one sitting?_ Danielle wondered.

"Yup. Though, considering I've had to hide them, I guess I never really thought of a lot of mundane uses." He shrugged idly as he munched on a piece of bacon thoughtfully, like he was thinking of some uses.

XXX

**Half an Hour Later**

"So, what's the needle for?" Danielle asked as she switched to her ghost form, sitting on a lab table next to something that looked like a small metallic Jack-o-Lantern. Danny (who had insisted on them not using the lab's examination table) was sitting next to her, watching his mother prepare the likely oversized needle carefully while Jazz was leaning next to a Fenton Peeler armor type of suit that was being worked on. Just knowing that it was originally built for ripping him apart molecule by molecule caused it to send a shiver up his spine, even if it was being used far more benignly than originally intended.

"Getting a sample of your ectoplasmic signature," his mother answered as she slid a vial into the receiving end. "If it perfectly matches Danny's, then we can proceed to seeing if the Anti-Creep Mode recognizes you." Danielle seemed uneasy as she moved the needle over. "This may sting a little."

"How much?" Danielle asked.

"Not a lot," Danny answered. "No more than a bad landing."

"Reassuring." She sarcastically answered as she inhaled and his mother pressed the device to her arm, green ectoplasm surging into the surgical vial as Danielle grit her teeth visibly and exhaling sharply. Even knowing the friendly intent, Danny could not help but feel worried as he watched, mostly from knowing how close he had been to being dissected by his own parents. She inhaled again as the needle was pulled away and his father took the vial and inserted a sample into an ectoplasmic signature scanner based on DNA analysis machines.

"Give it a few hours, and we'll have an answer," his father explained. "So for now, how about a course on Fenton gear? I'm sure you'll get plenty of hours in with a Thermos."

Jazz stepped in, "Uh, Dad, you sure that's the best idea right now?"

"What better time?" He asked, "It's not like she has anything else to do..."

Danny had to admit, he had a point. He glanced at Danielle as she switched back to human form and hopped off. "Might as well get the basic stuff at least, unless you have a better idea on what do to." He caught Jazz stepping forward like she was going to say something before stopping herself. _Probably some silly family bonding thing,_ he decided as he turned his attention back to Danielle as his parents were starting to look over the early readings from the scanner.

"Work on some technique that I haven't figured out yet? I dunno, duplication or something." Danielle offered. "Unless you think we ought to wait?"

"I haven't trained anyone before," Danny admitted, "But yeah, we probably should start some basics..." he glanced at the clock and calculated how much time he had until he had to meet Sam. _Okay, it's nine thirty now, meeting her at five... we're probably going to end up meeting earlier because we need to get Tucker in the loop too, and I really owe it to Valerie to pay her a visit and give her a chance to vent, she's got to be beating..._

"Actually, there are some things we should probably do." Danny answered as the familiar guilt welled up again. "Valerie helped us yesterday, remember? And you remember how I convinced her to help you, Danielle?"

Danielle paused and nodded slowly. "Pay her a visit?"

"Yeah. We owe it to her." He glanced at Jazz. "You aren't going to object to this on some sort of psych grounds, are you?"

Jazz smirked sadly before shaking her head.

XX

**Forty Minutes Later**

**Elmerton Apartments**

Danielle was floating behind Danny as they dropped down in the alleyways from their short flight over. He switched back to his human form, causing her to raise an eyebrow. "We shouldn't be in our ghost forms for this." Danny explained as she nodded, switching her own form back to human. They quickly made their way to the apartment building and Danny knocked on the door. It opened and an imposing figure stood over them, looking down on them.

"Daniel, and... you must be his 'cousin'." The man stared straight at Danielle, narrowing his eyes in judgment. Even if he was just wary or trying to look at her, it still shot ice down her spine, which reminded her of the moment of consideration that had helped push her towards Amity Park. _Stop thinking that girl,_ she angrily thought, _he's probably just freaked out like the rest of these people about what happened._

"Uh, yes, Mister Gray," Danny explained. "This is Danielle, and I... I wanted to talk with Valerie. I mean, what happened yesterday was..."

"Your responsibility." Mister Gray cut in. "I figured you'd come." He opened the door all the way. "You can come on in, but you should remember that Valerie is grounded."

She could sense the blow that comment had on her 'cousin', likely making him feel even worse than he already kept dropping into. She walked through and realized the tough living Valerie had; the place was still somewhat clean, but it definitely needed some renovations. She knew they had it pretty well compared to living in the streets. Sure, she could always hit one of Vlad's hideouts, but she had to stay in the street a few times, and those were always the long nights because she was completely exposed...

Danny knocked on Valerie's door, and she opened it before a confused look took over. Danielle could see the shock in her face that Danny had come, but she could also see her muscles tense like she was going to slug him... and her eyes, she recognized the fear. A hint of the same that she had shown seeing Danny's full power, blended with her anger.

"Danny... what're you doing here?" Valerie asked, unsuccessful in her attempt to tone the anger out of her voice.

"I... I wanted to apologize, and make sure you were alright." Danny stuttered out. "I mean, I pulled you into something I shouldn't have..."

"We better talk about this in my room." Valerie cut in. It was not aggressive, but it was not a a gentle request either. The two walked in as she opened the door wider before shutting it behind them.

Valerie's room was dirty compared to the rest of the place, but it looked like the dirtiness was from use, various bits of ghost hunting equipment, information pieces, and what she guessed was school work from this 'Lancer' fellow. The door clicked shut, and Danielle turned to see Valerie gripping the handle tightly, like she was oscillating between two extremes of emotion.

"Damn it, why couldn't you of shown up in your ghost form, then I wouldn't feel so bad about wanting to rip you apart..." Valerie muttered angrily, more to herself than anything.

"What?" Danny asked quietly in shock.

Valerie sighed. "I don't know, I just don't know. After... after..."

"After I killed those twenty three soldiers?" He supplied, choking as the words came out.

Unfortunately, whatever help he was trying to offer just set Valerie off as she screamed with enough anger that Danielle turned invisible instinctively. "YES!" Valerie shouted, "After you _murdered_ those people! What happened to '_can you really take part in destroying a human_', Phantom? What happened to trying to save everyone's life? What, I'm the only one who's supposed to care about human lives because I'm a human? Bullshit, you used that excuse to get me to help you save Danielle because she's half ghost like you!"

"Valerie..." Danny tried to cut in, but he was hurt by the accusations... No, Danielle realized, not the accusations themselves. That he seemed to be taking like he deserved it.

It was the epithet that Valerie had thrown at him. _Phantom_. Not Danny, not Daniel, not Dan, not Fenton, but _Phantom_. Like he was not even a _person_. That cut was one that Danielle could feel. She could hear her so-called 'father' saying what he thought she existed for, and could see how Danny, who was born and grew up naturally instead of whatever test tube lab device Vlad used, would be cut even deeper by the remark.

"What, you going to say something like it was all your responsibility? Shoulder the world and say I had nothing to do with it? Like I should just accept what happened because _I spotted for you?!_"

"Valerie, listen to me!" He paused a moment, like the choice of words was dragging up something. "We both know why I did it. Do you think this is any easier for me? I've seen the Ghost Zone, I know what's there. The thought of twenty three more people ending up there permanently isn't something that sits well with me because we both know that it's not all fluffy clouds and golden gates."

"Yeah, and we just flushed twenty three men and women down the Styx! Come on, you think I can just move past that? Can you?"

"Oh for Clockwork's sake!" Danny screamed in unguarded frustration, leaving Danielle confused as to just who he was invoking, as she was sure there was no deity with _that_ as a name. "Valerie, do you think it's easy to know that no matter what those white coated medical doctors with their fancy certificates say, that _I just killed twenty three people_? Valerie, I've seen what can happen when I go off the rails. It troubles me at night knowing what could happen if I pole vault the slippery slope and go nuts."

"Yeah, I'm sure," Valerie bit back. "So, was it worth it, twenty three lives?"

"No, it wasn't." Danielle cut in, reappearing as she finally kicked her defensive instincts off. She was surprised at her own ability to cut in, but she was seeing some new friendship going down in flames all because of her. _Here's hoping I picked up the right hints,_ Danielle hoped as she started talking the ghost hunter and half ghost down.

"We both know that this was self defense and trying to keep damage down. The Guys in White were hunting me to strap me to an examination table. Valerie, you stepped in for some sense of justice, I can't think of why else you would. You helped save me from Vlad, and you stepped in again. How would you feel if the GIW just carted me off when you could of done something?"

Valerie seemed taken aback, like she had forgotten Danielle was there, and whatever she said had cut deep as she turned to Danny. "And you, Danny. You were doing everything you could to stop it from getting worse. Come on, you were over this already, you were doing everything you could to avoid it and the Guys in White wouldn't give up. What would of happened had we just blasted them in the middle of Amity Park and the resulting crossfire? Or if we tried a normal fight and got battered down by numbers like you said we would?" That had stopped Danny in his tracks too as he took a step away from her to get a good look.

Danielle inhaled, hoping she did not push too far. "Look, both of you have common ground here: You're not forgiving yourselves, either for doing the wail or for watching and letting it happen. Okay, fine, but are you really going to rip each other apart for taking what you felt was the only way to end the whole thing without destroying your home town?"

That had ground the argument to a halt, at least. The room was quiet for a while as they were visibly trying to understand what had just been dropped on them. Valerie leaned on a chest of drawers with old wanted posters stacked messily on top while Danny leaned on the wall next to a weapons footlocker. Danielle waited patiently for the two to make up their minds.

"I'm sorry," Valerie finally said. "I shouldn't of bagged on you like that. I chose to get involved, I should of accepted what could of happened, first rule with guns and all that."

"Maybe," Danny answered uneasily, "but that doesn't mean you weren't right in calling me out. Look, I know I can't make up for what happened and you're probably right hating my guts, but I just can't say it enough: I'm sorry. I know what happened was wrong no matter what my intent was, no matter how much control I apparently had over the Ghostly Wail. I should of been able to do _better_..."

"Danny, that wail was something you used to bring down a whole lab facility and destroy an entire project, and that was _after_ being beaten up several times and being experimented on." Danielle cut in as she remembered how much damage it caused. "I think doing what you did was impressive enough."

"That doesn't make it right, Danielle. It doesn't make it right..." Danny seemed distant as he said that, closing his eyes. "So," he turned to Valerie. "What's the damage on your end?"

"Grounded for a week, though my dad admits it probably should be more. No charges officially filed yet." She shrugged. "Apparently, it's going to be some sort of hearing; I think General Parker, the Aussie running Task Force Raven, is sitting on it."

"Well, if his record speaks for itself, he'll be tough but fair. Suppose that's for the best; if we got a GIW sham court, we'd have life sentences and lab tables handed out like candies."

XXX

**Manson Residence**

"So, what do you think, Tuck?" Sam asked, talking to Tucker over web cam. She had brought him up to speed on the recent events, though the details of the Ghostly Wail was their main focus.

_"All in all, what else could be done?"_ Tucker shrugged. _"I'm not exactly easy with the idea knowing our best friend's killed either, but with the alternative being the GIW turning Amity Park to a smoking crater in the crossfire... I'm honestly fine with it."_

"That makes one of us," she noted glumly even for her. "I just can't help it but see _that_ time jaunt in him now. The features just keep sinking into him when I look at him, and last night I couldn't shake nightmares of what _his_ time must of looked like." She was able to recognize some of their classmates, like Ricky Marsh keeled over like his internal organs had been phased out of his body and somehow Paulina was dead in an orange jumpsuit and armed with ecto-weapons. "And I _shouldn't_, because I know he's pretty much kicking that change in the face with his guilt."

Tucker put his hand to his chin thoughtfully, rubbing his stubble since he had not shaved yet. _"Does he think he's turning into it?"_ Tucker finally offered.

"Jazz mentioned that _he_ got mentioned once or twice, but she did her best to talk him away from it." She glanced towards her door to make sure her parents were not trying to sneak in. "I'm worried about him; if he's too beat up emotionally when things heat up around here again..."

_"Valerie's probably beating herself up too, so that's two main defenders down. What about Danielle, what happened with her?"_

"She's living with the Fentons for now; though Danny's dad seemed like he's willing to adopt her."

Tucker rubbed his chin thoughtfully again as he did something on his computer. _"I wonder..."_

"Tucker, what are you doing?" Sam asked with a raised eyebrow, wondering what zany scheme he was coming up with.

_"I'm not doing anything, just checking some technicalities... okay..."_ He minimized whatever he was looking at on his screen. _"Right. How about charges? Haven't heard much on that, but I'm figuring this is going to trial."_

"From what the news said this morning, it'll be some hearing in the near future. That General Parker guy who's heading Task Force Raven is going to be sitting on it as a neutral party, so it shouldn't be a GIW sham, but otherwise? Who knows."

_"I'll be honest, let's be glad it isn't a jury for once. You actually pay attention in history..."_

"Yeah. Americans really hate deaths and tend to be more focused on casualty counts in one go rather than comparing yearly numbers rationally. On top of that, there were still folks who figure Danny's a bad ghost even before this. If this turns into politics..."

_"Or serious politics, at least..."_ Tucker simply nodded, the two leaving the worries unsaid. Mounting any sort of counter to the GIW politically would be bloody depending on just how much support this whole mess had caused. _"Are you two?..."_

"Well, it's not a date tonight, if that's what you're asking," Sam explained, "we need to figure a few things out. I'm not too worried, but... we have to talk about it at length."

The technogeek nodded. _"Alright, well, if you two want to talk to me, I'm here."_

Sam smiled, "Thanks Tucker. I'll talk to you Monday if nothing else."

_"See you later."_

As she stood up and looked into the mirror, she wondered what she would tell Danny. She knew he needed time to recover, but he was trying to shoulder it all on himself and not drag the others down. _Should I give him some distance?_ Sam wondered as she stared into her reflection with another sigh. Someone knocked on the door.

"It's open." Sam said and turned to see her mother walk in. Mentally bracing herself for a verbal bloodbath, she turned around.

"Samantha," her mother began, "we need to talk. About your relationship with Danny, and how careless you're being."

"What're you talking about, the GIW Specter Shield you want me to wear constantly?" Sam jerked her thumb towards the inactive device lying on the floor. _Now why the heck Oscar and Kilo weren't wearing those, I'll never understand..._

"Yes. You need something to protect you from those ghosts that you seem so determine to fight with that ab... _hybrid_."

Sam clenched her fists before releasing the grip. "I know. And I know when to wear a Specter Deflector, but if I wear one constantly, Danny can't help me out at all when we're in a fight. I'll take a few more bruises if it means that Danny can save me or vice versa without lighting him up like a firecracker."

"Is your own life that meaningless to you, Samantha?!" Her mother's shocked reaction seemed genuine.

"No, but I value my friend's life too. Life, unlife, afterlife, whatever the heck it is." Sam shrugged at the frankly meaningless technicality.

"So you are not disturbed at all by the idea that he might be dead, that your love might very well be necrophilia?" The question was without any direct point behind it, and seemed to be more of an honest philosophical question.

"Does it matter?" Sam bluntly retorted. "It's still Danny; he's still him even if he grew up like anyone in the time since the accident. As far as I'm concerned, it can be whatever they want to call it."

"I see." There was no emotion in her voice as she folded her arms. "Well, I suppose you have something to get ready for later today." She turned and left, leaving Sam to shrug it off and return to finishing the homework Lancer had assigned what was feeling like an eternity ago. _Suppose the work of Milton needs its attention... really losing the Paradise here..._

XX

**Elmerton Apartments**

"So," Valerie said slowly as Danielle finished explaining. "You're a clone. Huh, I never would of thought I'd see the day that happened."

Danielle shrugged. Danny had taken a step out and was having a conversation with Mister Gray, leaving the two to talk and she had filled Valerie in. She owed it to her anyways; Valerie had risked a lot helping her. "Yeah. Honestly, I just need to move on with the fact. It's part of who I am, sure, but I'm not just a thing. I'm a person too."

"Still, I can't believe Vlad would do that." Valerie admitted slowly, "I mean, we all know what a fruit loop he was now, but it's still mind boggling considering I ate up his facade like a kid flooded by cotton candy like everyone else until after you were stabilized when I saw him change forms."

"He's good at that. If Danny got the brawn of being a halfa, he got the brains and mastered manipulation. I'm pretty sure that's why he never even realized that abilities like the Ghostly Wail could be used by half-ghosts; he wasn't fighting constantly and always stacked the deck in his favor before going into a fight." She shrugged. "I mean, in theory he should be using all the advanced abilities that Danny has displayed since the original accident that gave him his powers were from a Fenton portal."

"It makes sense, though it might have something to do with the portal." Valerie suggested. "The original all those years ago was a lot smaller, right, and he just got hit in the face?"

"Essentially, yeah." Danielle admitted, curious where Valerie was going with the idea. "It took him a few years before his powers fully developed too."

"Let's call becoming half-ghost dying for a minute here, just because I don't have a better word for it." Valerie pushed herself off of her bed. "So, he spent the next few years dying, until finally buying a farm and his ghost form unlocked. Danny, instead..." she paused, curling her lip as she likely had unpleasant thoughts about what happened, "well, went ghost instantly since he was fully blasted rather than just given a facelift. So maybe Danny got the powers at a greatly increased rate too, hence why he caught up and got years of experience in on one year? That, plus proverbial level grinding from all the fights he's been in."

"Could be," Danielle admitted, impressed with Valerie's insight with only partial information. "So, what's being grounded? I never had that with Vlad since by the time he was really mad, I cut ties."

"It's basically like being under arrest, except a lot more mild. Varies depending on the parent, but my dad generally keeps it to sitting in here thinking and doing homework."

"Heh. Man, that's gotta stink."

"Oh yeah. But it's worse for the socialites whose connections tend to go down the waters of a porcelain throne for a while because of it." Valerie gave a slight smirk, "I left that crowd quite a while ago."

The door opened and both Danny and Mister Gray were standing there. "Danielle," Danny said, "We should go now, there's something I need to do." He turned his head, "Thank you again for letting us come in, Mister Gray."

"You're welcome, I think it helped both of you." He nodded, then raised an eyebrow at Danielle before shrugging it off. _What's he staring at?_ she wondered as she waved to Valerie.

"Bye."

"See you around, kid," Valerie answered with a faint smile as the two left. Outside the apartment building, Danny turned at her with a suspicious look.

"Danny?" she asked.

"Why were you googly-eyed at Valerie there for a few moments?"

"Huh?" Danielle asked with a frown, wondering what he was going on about.

"You were looking like me seeing Valerie after fighting Pariah Dark for a few moments in there. Ya'know, love struck."

"I... what? That's ridiculous!" Danielle exclaimed in shock. How could she? I mean, she was a she and so was Valerie... _Wait a second, I have Danny's... Oh. Duh._

"Well?" Danny asked. It was not cruelly phrased, and he seemed more amused than anything. "Nothing to add?"

"Nope. Nothing but pointing out that hey, I've got _your_ hormones, so don't go looking at me and asking where it came from."

Danny paused, staring at her wide eyed before his right eye started twitching as he processed the snark before he bawled out laughing.

"W... you... oh man!" He panted between his laughter, "Okay, I think I needed that..."

XXX

**Several Hours Later**

**Nasty Burger Restaurant, Amity Park**

"So," Danny asked as they were sitting at their table. "The parents aren't forbidding you from seeing me?"

"Nope, though they're close." Sam shrugged. "Besides, they can't stop us from seeing each other at school, can they?"

"Nope." Danny admitted with a faint smile. No, it was not intended as a date anymore, but it was great to finally start putting things back to normal. It was over, and it was time to move on.

"So, how's Danielle doing?"

"Good; she's settled in nicely so far. Jazz is pretty much doting on her; man, I sometimes wonder if she was like that with me..." He rubbed the back of his neck as he tried to remember.

"She was, from what you told me." Sam smirked. "I think Danielle will like it, assuming she doesn't feel cramped by the rules. Your parents taking it well?"

"Not adopting her, but I'd give that some time. Until then, she's with us. I think she's with Jazz right now." Sam nodded as she closed her eyes. Danny recognized the warning signs; something was troubling her.

"Sam?" He asked worriedly. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," she answered, "just some lingering thoughts about yesterday... and other things."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"N..." she caught herself and glanced around, making sure no one was around. "Yes, I do. Danny... you remember what you told us about your last fight with _him_?"

She did not say which 'him', but Danny knew instinctively which one. Unbidden, the dream that came to him last night played in the back of his mind and he forced it back; he knew it all already.

"I remember."

"Danny... knowing how close we were to you going down that path because someone else framed you, then seeing you unleash everything yesterday. I just can't help but see _him_ when I look at you."

Everything froze, a deeper cold than his core's cryogenic energy could cause him when he accidently let it bottle up again. _No... she can't... no..._

"I know, it's silly. You're pretty much defying it. But... I just can't help but wonder what would have happened if we _didn't_ have the help you had stopping it. If you really did go off like that..." Sam was worried, and she looked cold as she stared at him.

"Sam," Danny said gently as he put a hand on hers, surprised at how cold it was to touch. Normally he was the one with cold skin because of his half-ghost physiology. "You know the general details, but there's one thing I never told you guys, some specifics I glossed over because I never thought of how important they were."

"I know, you promised... but what if that never actually happened, even if you remember it? I mean, everyone thinks you always that that DP logo on your chest..."

He could not help but smirk; _yeah, the logo you gave me in a rare moment of girliness_. "Sam, it doesn't matter to me. You want to know what let me fire the Ghostly Wail I used there, how that happened?"

"How?" Sam asked, surprised that he was broaching the topic.

"I told him that I would change because I promised, and he mocked me. Laughed at me for being such a child for promising. And told him that I promised... and that was when I unleashed it." He inhaled. "I had a visit from Nocturne last night, he was watching some nightmare of mine when I was seeing _that_ line of events from _his_ perspective and _his_ work... when I went back to sleep, I was thinking of that defiant statement."

"What do you mean?" Sam asked with a frown.

"What it means is that I don't care if that never happened because I got a second chance I probably didn't deserve, I don't care if the promise got erased because of that. Because right here, right now, I'm promising that again. I'm _never_ going to turn into him, even if it takes every last ounce of what life I have left to make sure that happens, even if I have to lock myself up with Pariah Dark himself." He held her hand tightly as she smiled.

"And that's why I'm still happy to be your girlfriend, no matter what." Sam answered, "Heck, forget dating. I'm still happy to be your friend, because no matter how much you look like you stray, you never forget it and try to move forward. That's a lot better than most people can say. I know you would never let _him_ became you." She pulled him closer and they kissed.

Yes, Danny realized as they put their arms around each other, he finally understood. This was what had kept him going no matter what damage he had taken. It was not some ideal like liberty, justice, the American way... it was something that he could see, feel, hear. Those close to him that kept him fighting, and reminded him constantly why he had to hold himself to a higher standard: because he had great power... and he knew the rest of the cliché.

XX

"_Danielle, this is a bad idea."_ Jazz said into the Fenton Phone she had borrowed and slipped into her ear as she had gone ghost to follow Danny. _"Trust me, the last time Sam or Danny were spying on romance..."_

"I'm not spying on romance," she said from her observational position on a rooftop across from the Nasty Burger, "I'm making sure no one tries something... wait, there's a news van pulling up... Channel 6?"

_"Oh great; those guys have been hammering on Danny since who knows... you better get close, make sure he stays calm. Stay invisible, he shouldn't know you're there."_

"Alright," Danielle answered as she gently lifted into the air and flew closer as the Channel 6 van pulled up. She could see Danny and Sam standing up as the news reporter, some short blond woman and her burly camera man, entered the Nasty Burger.

"OI!" shouted Ervin 'Third Degree' Burns from behind the counter, "No news crews with cameras without talking to management! Get out of here and leave the customers alone!"

"Don't worry, this will only take a minute." The newswoman said simply as she strode towards Danny and Sam. "I'm Sarah Banigan, Channel 6 News, here live seeing Danny Phantom in the Nasty Burger... acting normal in spite of yesterday's trauma to twenty three families." She shoved a microphone to Danny's face. "Sources claim that you knew the full capabilities of your so-called Ghostly Wail and that it would cause untold damage. If true, then you knowingly used it with full knowledge that you would kill those people. Do you have any comments on this?"

Danny's eyes flashed green and he grit his teeth, staring at the reporter like he was aiming plasma beams and about to go ghost. Danielle was about to get in front of him and stop him from making a huge mistake when he spoke up.

"Yes. I do." His voice was restrained, but anyone could taste the anger in his voice. "I know how much damage it could do. So yes, I knew that if used, no matter how much control I was using, it was still taking a huge risk, a giant leap towards something that is more what you would see from the ghosts I fight than the hero so many call me."

"So you're saying you knew that you would kill those soldiers?" Banigan asked pointedly.

"I knew that the risk was there, and that I was taking a huge risk with those people." Danny continued without breaking off. "Sure, I could have just fought them normally since we had taken it out of Amity Park, but I knew that in a normal fight, they would win. Even if I leapt around the place like a mad man, three hundred against three is long odds, no matter how tough you are."

"So you're saying you were forced to kill?"

Danny grit his teeth, pausing as Sam scowled at the reporter like she was about to let loose on her as she kept a hand on Danny's shoulder.

"No. I still made the choice, but let me ask you something, Miss Banigan. Do you know the names of the soldiers?"

"I... what?"

"Those twenty three people who died yesterday. Do you know their names?"

"I fail to see..." Banigan attempted to counter before Danny verbally ran her over and knocked Sam's hand off his shoulder.

"Logan Allen. Eric Bannon. Amanda Blade. Jordan Burke. Tarquin Coats. Nicholas Colt. Alexander Conner. Valerie Cortez. Alexis Henagar. Clint Mason. Giacomo Marona. Arnold Miller. Jason Morris. Michael Reznov. Autumn Riley. Adrian Sabatier. Joseph Salinger. Marcus Sheppard. Annabelle Swann. Jeremiah Webb. Charles Westmoreland. James and Jessica Williams."

The Nasty Burger sat in stunned silence as he recited all twenty three names, Sam dropping her jaw at Danny in shock. Danielle was staring at him dumbfounded as she gently moved away from him and the crowd invisibly and intangibly.

"_Yes,_ I found out what the names were." Danny continued after giving everyone a moment to process. "I found out the names of the people that I killed, because _I owe it to them to give them that respect_, to treat them as _people_, not a statistic_._ They all deserve respect for taking on a job fighting beings with a higher general power level than the average human. They deserve respect for losing everything doing that job. Their families deserve our condolences, prayers if you're religious, and respect for raising children who were _willing_ to take a stand."

He strode forward and pointed a finger directly at her throat. "And you know what? You owe them that respect too, Banigan. If you're going to try and politicize their deaths... show some human decency and use them by their _names_. Because they were people. Just like any of us here in this restaurant, on this planet." He took a step back.

Everything was silent save for the hum of electricity running as Banigan rubbed the back of her neck nervously before speaking again. "Ah... so... this is Sarah Banigan, with Danny Phantom in Amity Park. Back to you, Phil..." She jerked her head outside and left the diner with her camera man. As they left, the Nasty Burger erupted into cheers and Ervin passed something to Danny.

"What's this?" he asked as he looked at the token.

"Free refills when you put it in until you leave." The restaurant's manager explained. "First reason is Nasty Burger policy when reporters barge in, we respect the right to privacy from the media."

"And the second reason?" Sam asked with a raised eyebrow.

"For calling her out on her callousness."

Danielle smirked as she phased out of the Nasty Burger and followed the van.

"Great. Just great," she overheard Banigan complaining, "he just owned us in front of our entire viewer base and won brownie points with the public..."

"He was right, you know. You were politicizing their deaths and treating them like a statistic." The camera man retorted as they drove off and Danielle returned to her vantage point, smiling. That had certainly explained what Danny had spent so much time doing after they got back from Valerie's apartment.

But... hearing the names finally explained to Danielle why Danny and Valerie were so messed up from the deaths. She realized that had things been different, she would of literally just been 'another one of Vlad's cloning projects', just a number. Not in actuality, but in what she was remembered as. Those people were more than just twenty three KIA soldiers, and that was what had scared them so much.

XX

**Half an Hour Later**

**Fenton Works**

"Anyone seen Danielle?"

"She left a while ago." Jazz answered her father as she put down her psychology textbook and glanced out the window as Danielle phased through it and dropped onto the living room floor. "Ah, never mind, she's here." Jazz rolled her eyes briefly.

"Huh?" Danielle asked as she switched back to human form. "Did I do something wrong?"

"Well, there was a door..." she answered with a slight smirk. Admittedly, it was a minor thing, but she knew that Danielle needed to have those humanizing moments to keep her from going too high into the clouds. Not humanizing as in giving her personality, but keeping her in perspective of everyone else, and not letting the options her powers give her take over.

"Sorry. I'm pretty used to just phasing through the safe house walls. So what am I needed for?"

"The results!" Jazz turned to see her parents coming in proudly with her father's boast. "Your DNA was close enough that we shouldn't need to add a copy of yours to the exception list to the Fenton Works Anti-Creep Mode, but we're doing it anyways just to be safe."

"You want to try it out?" Maddie asked as she held a remote control that would activate it. Jazz sighed and put her book in front of her as she heard Danielle switch forms and the house's defense systems activate.

The lightshow that followed reminded Jazz that no matter how good her parents were as engineers, they were still mad scientists and all the baggage that went with it, including failed upgrades that blew up in everyone's face. But even Jazz had to admit that the sight of her father crashing into an energy absorbent cutout of his face was, in hindsight, rather amusing for its irony. Danielle leapt behind the couch and Jazz leaned over.

"Just switch to human form," Jazz said casually, remembering Danny's explanation of the system during the Reality Gauntlet incident.

Danielle did so, and the house went silent again. _Welcome to the family, Danielle,_ Jazz mused as she glanced at her 'little sister', _and all the crazy it involves._

XXXX

**End Chapter**

**Epilogue:**

Deep in his Ghost Zone lair, Clockwork turned to his new guest. "Ah, Nocturne. You were successful in your observation of dreams and have thought of the implications over the last few chronological cycles." It was not a question, it was a statement.

"Yes. You were right, Clockwork, he would be a strong candidate for this new role that must be filled. His dreams speak to the inner will required to handle such power, and from experience I know his tenacity." The ghost of sleep looking at him curiously. "Why are you suddenly so involved? You never cared about meddling in the affairs of the world until that hybrid boy came along. It is most unlike you to have a hand so active."

Clockwork frowned with a resigned sigh. "What purpose would it serve for me to lord my power over the living, to act like a godly figure liable to be invoked? Your power draws from dreams and you seek to raise it, but mine is of Time, and Time is infinite. I have nothing to gain from attempting to use my power for my own glory over my peers. Yet my responsibility is greater, as it is easy for such power to be used to the wrong purpose." He shifted from adult to infant form and activated a chronoscope, showing the Guys in White in the near future working on project White Wraith and the test subject, a homeless person kidnapped off the streets, dying horribly and screaming as the anesthesia was neutralized by the attempted half-ghost creation process.

"I can see the arms race which now begins over the powers of the Ghost Zone." He pointed his staff to the chronoscope and it shifted to show a future Chinese attempt to build a Ghost Zone portal... and for it to literally explode in their face without even a trace of successfully capturing ectoplasmic energy.

"Powers of the Earth will seek to gain dominion over the power that lies in the Ghost Zone, much as ghosts go to Earth to seek their own goals, be it revenge, wanderlust, or... power." He kept the pointed remark directed towards Nocturne even though he knew it would not sink in.

"And yet you watch and have watched idly as terrible tragedies happened. Even as people died by the millions in war and genocide, you still did not intervene." Nocturne's counterpoint was direct albeit conversational. He gestured towards the cell where Dan was held. "You only intervened with him, and even then only when the Observants asked you to."

"Some lessons must be learned the hard way." Clockwork explained as the chronoscope shut down and he shifted to the form of an old man. "No one learns when an all powerful being holds their hands the whole way. Yet, they would be foolish not to question the all powerful and why he, or she, acts in the way they chose. You know my view of time, from above rather than from the street, and should have understood it by now. There are some paths that I have acted to avert, yes, but I would be a fool to change that which is not broken."

The Ghost of Sleep scowled at him faintly before shrugging. "I see. Though, with how you handled such, I suspect that you were very much motivated by tweaking the Observants along with your other goals."

He smirked as he shifted the chronoscope to the Observants arguing about the timeline they currently saw and their belief he was not living up to his expectations as the seals around Dan Phantom's prison weakened in the natural course of time mending itself. The familiar pair of Observants, Wardell and Ira, were arguing for them to act against Clockwork and destroy Dan as a matter of Clockwork forsaking his duties to time by allowing such a world ending threat to continue existing outside of the laws of time. "Certainly, being able to irritate those watchers was a welcome opportunity, but there are some flashpoints in time which must happen, and in all timelines they come one way or another. The ultimate nature of the interaction between Ghost Zone and Earth is one such flashpoint."

"Hence why you have such focus on the ghost boy, who is at the center of this flashpoint in one way or another." Nocturne answered, suddenly understanding. "You want him to grow in power, by confrontation, by experience, by knowledge, until he is ready for that next step."

"It would be an ideal way for time to travel, yes." Clockwork answered as he shifted the chronoscope to the devastated world of Dan's reign, of him standing over the liquefied corpse of his first and by perseverance final human opposition, a certain huntress who in other timelines had been a close friend, even lover. "But there are many roads which the parade of time may take. But even with all these paths, all will lead to some answer." He shifted to infant form and looked to the powerful former hybrid who was seething to escape.

"Indeed... what roads shall you take?" Clockwork asked rhetorically as he _knew_ the legion answers and possibilities. "What junctions shall this eternal parade march through in its unceasing journey by your choices?"

XXX

**Author's Notes:**

_- Like the Guys in White, the two Observants have no names. As such, I decided to give them names as I did the two GIW regulars for when I use them. The first one (by order of speaking appearances in _'The Ultimate Enemy_') is Wardell, and the second one with a deeper voice is Ira. Consider this consistent with first/second identification used in my fanfic 'A New World Network'. Wardell is also the same one who speaks in the beginning of '_Torrent of Terror'_, and yes, I checked clips to compare the voice. Same voice._

_- Danny and Valerie... you know, I'll admit, it has some great dynamics and I can well understand why many ship the two, especially since I enjoy writing their interactions. Hell, I'm pretty sure that Clockwork has seen dozens of timelines where the two got together instead of Danny and Sam (who have equally great dynamics). Knowing these dynamics creates an interesting thing to look at because there are so many possibilities, and fan authors who work with these characters should consider each one carefully when writing. There's many dynamics that can be used, but writing them out well in a way that does justice to all the characters, even the ones you have to shaft to fuel the ship, that is the real challenge._

_- Danielle... well, let's be honest, she very much _should_ have a different view on morals than the rest of us because of her experiences. To her, the GIW casualties was self defense, pure and simple. It was a tragedy in her eyes to see lives lost, sure, but it was not something to turn into a ball of angst over. Even then, though, she can understand why Danny and Valerie were so freaked because hey, she's growing up too and learning. Every character in Danny Phantom has some dynamics, some more pronounced than others, and they all had nuance. Even Dash had some nuance and he was the generic Flash Thompson expy._

_- For those curious or surprised at how long this chapter was, yes, I chose to kick up the length. I'll admit, I originally planned on this story being another three chapter one, I didn't intend it to be a 'special', to use TV terminology, with extended length, but honestly, I think I might increase the length of these fics if appropriate. I think the next one can be handled within the normal three chapters, but some might deserve increased length._

_- Channel 6 is actually in the Danny Phantom series and therefore is not intended to be representative of any real life news networks. Specifically, the news channel that you see in 'Public Enemies', though the series did go through a bunch of generic ones such as Channel 4 in 'Reign Storm' and, if you look closely in 'Eye for an Eye', the camera man has a 7 on his camera which gives us a Channel 7 on top of it. Although the desk woman is for Channel 6 named in 'Public Enemies', I figured it would be better to just make my own punching bag reporter, and Lance Thunder probably figured out how bad an idea it was to go out for interviews after the last time he got mauled by spectral danger._

_- Otherwise, that's it for this story. I hope you enjoyed reading it. Again, reviews are always welcome for feedback on my writing so I can improve it, and it also gives me some insight to if I'm writing the characters in character for the events that occur or if I'm going off the rails. _

_- Finally, thank you to Writeous, chadtayor020, Deborahpflover, Sammi, and MsFrizzle for their reviews. Princessbinas... I already explained why not in a PM, but thank you for the review._


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